Safety Off
by Amailia
Summary: [SPOILERS!] The story of a relationship between the Sole Survivor (F) and MacCready. Framed around story quests, so there's definitely Fallout 4 spoilers involved!
1. Easy City Downs

Easy City Downs. They'd stumbled on it after having a few too many beers and deciding to spend the afternoon wandering around looking for trouble. Even though the sun hung low on the horizon and she knew they should head back to Diamond City before nightfall, she couldn't resist taking a closer look. MacCready followed without question. He never seemed reluctant to walk into potential danger.

It took the better part of an hour to scour the grounds and eliminate the raiders and gangsters that had infested the place. When they were done, they carefully picked through the thugs' belongings, stashing any ammo, chems or caps they found. Then they stood in the firelight of a burning barrel of debris, staring at the racetrack as they realized what exactly was going on. It was some kind of… robot race.

The machines paid no heed to their now dead masters as they circled, beeping or occasionally spouting a programed taunt. She wondered if it would ever end, or if they'd keep circling forever.

"As good a use as any for the things, I guess," MacCready said with a shrug.

She nodded in agreement, turning to the southwest. The sun had set more than an hour ago. She was still surprised by how bright the stars and moon were in this world, with so little light pollution to mask their brilliance. She considered the option of heading back to Diamond City in the dark, but knew it was too dangerous.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" MacCready asked.

"That we already pushed our luck by drinking all morning then heading out into the city, guns blazing?"

He gave her a rueful grin. "Ya. Maybe not the best idea ever."

"We can stay here for the night, should be relatively safe," she agreed. She lugged her heavy pack onto her shoulder and headed for the main building.

They found their way upstairs, picking the room farthest from the entrance to set up for the night. She dug through the drawers of a nearby desk that was strewn with debris as MacCready dragged a dirty mattress in from another room.

He tossed it against a wall, then sighed heavily. "This place is depressing."

"It's ok," she replied, "I found alcohol."

He smiled as she offered a bottle of bourbon out to him. He opened it and sniffed the contents, recoiling slightly. He shrugged, then took a deep drink, shuttering at its apparent bitterness. He offered it back to her and she took a swig herself, grimacing as well. Why couldn't any decent bourbon have survived the apocalypse?

"Are you even old enough to drink?" she asked with a smile.

He rolled his eyes. "Come on. Why all the grief about my age?"

"I just can't get over the child mayor thing." Her grin widened as she recalled his drunken tale from this morning of how he became the mayor of Little Lamplight, an all-child community outside of what was once Washington D.C., though now it was apparently referred to as "The Capital Wasteland".

"I never should have told you that." He shook his head. "I knew you'd use that knowledge for evil."

"Young man, I am over two-hundred years old, show some respect to your elders."

"Oh whatever, cryo-woman," he grumbled. She made a disgusted face to indicate her disapproval of the name, but he ignored her and continued. "I know you were married and all that, but you can't be much older than I am."

She let out a sigh and decided to relinquish a bit on badgering the poor guy. "Honestly, we're probably about the same age," she agreed. "I married young, had Shaun right out of the gate, more or less."

"Shotgun wedding, that's what they used to say right?"

She gave him a lopsided grin. "Yes, but… that's not exactly what happened. He was about to be deployed again, and we didn't want to wait till he got back. So we went to the courthouse and got it in writing. I was eighteen at the time."

His face slowly fell blank, and his voice quieted as he grew more serious. "I know he died… ten or so years ago, but to you it must have seemed like almost no time passed, right?"

She nodded slowly. It'd been over five months since she'd thawed out, and at the time she still thought her baby son was out there somewhere and her husband had been killed just moments prior. It had only been a few weeks since she'd discovered the truth — that after she saw Shaun being taken from her and watched her husband brutally murdered — she'd been frozen again for another ten years.

After she got out and the weeks and months passed, she thought it would get better, that she would gain some relief from being able to take action, to find her husband's murderer and avenge his death, to find out what really happened to Shaun. But in truth, she felt just as powerless now as she had when she was trapped in that pod, pounding on the glass and begging them not to take his life.

"I'm sorry," MacCready said softly. "It must have been hard to lose him like that."

"Thanks…" she said, trying not to sound skeptical. She hadn't quite been able to figure MacCready out yet, but he was rarely serious with her. She didn't sense an ulterior motive for his sentiment however, so for now, she would take it at face value.

A nearby beep startled them both, and they raised their guns toward the desk. After a few seconds of silence, they exchanged an apprehensive look before stepping toward it. MacCready kept his weapon up as she lowered hers, tossing some of the debris off the desk to reveal a functioning terminal.

"I can hack this." She knelt down in front of the computer. It took her only a few short minutes to unlock the console, revealing a host of commands. "It's the robot controls."

MacCready stepped closer to hover over her shoulder. "Great — make them shut up, please."

She read through the options, smiling mischievously back at him as she saw the last selection. His expression was blank at first, but after a moment, he smiled slightly and shrugged. It had been that kind of day, after all.

She arrowed down, then hit select to initiate the self-destruct sequence.


	2. Nuclear

The resulting cacophony of explosions was both shocking and impressive. She and MacCready recoiled from it instinctively, only to exchange an impressed look then step toward an slat in the wall boards to peek out toward the destruction. It seemed the majority of the robots had been on the part of the track just outside the building when she happened to initiate the sequence. Their burning debris littered the track below them and they recoiled again as additional explosions came from a storage shed nearby. It seemed there were additional robots being stored that weren't participating in the race. They watched soberly as the walls of the shed caught fire and the structure began to burn to the ground.

"You did say make them shut up…" she said as the commotion began to die down.

Suddenly, she was knocked off of her feet, her vision brightening and blurring, her eardrums pressured to the point of bursting. She landed hard on her shoulder, rolling over onto all fours as her stomach threatened to expel its contents. Radiation… one of the damn bots was nuclear. She could barely see MacCready out of the corner of her eye as he got his own bearings, rolling over and crawling toward her hurriedly. He yelled something at her that she couldn't hear over the deafening boom, then threw an arm over her shoulders, the other hand pressing her head down, as if to shield her from impact. She tried to yell back at him, but her voice was lost in the din.

Then she understood what he was getting at as one, two… three more nuclear detonations rocked them. She pressed her head toward her knees and tucked tighter into him with each one, trying to remember the civil defense drills she'd gone through in school. They were supposed to find a desk… or a bathroom… or something. There was no time for that now, no accounting for the way the explosions paralyzed the senses, blinded you, suppressed sound entirely, causing a pressure both outside and within you, poisoning the air until you felt like you were breathing fire. It was as if you existed in a vacuum, completely unable to take action or even feel terror, panic or otherwise while the explosion wreaked its havoc around you. At least that's how she felt, MacCready seemed far more functional during the whole debacle.

"Are you ok?" she could finally hear his voice waver as the dust settled around them. Though the structure still stood, seemingly unharmed, all the objects and debris inside had blown to the other side of the room, causing a rather comical pile up of objects against the far wall. Now, in addition to the moonlight, they had soft, warm, flickering firelight coming from the total wreckage outside. She said nothing in response but knew she was nodding fervently as she looked around, her senses still recovering from the onslaught.

She turned to look at MacCready and all her senses came rushing back at once. Sight as she saw the jagged debris sticking out of his flank, sound as she heard his pained groaning and her own voice insisting that he look at her, touch as his warm blood spilled out onto her hands and panic as she realized how bad it really was.

Any instinct she had lacked in reaction to the detonations was now made up for tenfold as she took hold of his shirt, ripping it in two with impressive ease. She released her own chest armor, letting it fall to the ground as she pulled her hooded sweatshirt off over her head. She forced him to lay back though he struggled against her. She rolled a piece of his torn shirt, shoving it between his teeth. She told him to look at her and she held his gaze as she counted to three, though that was mostly for her own sake, then ripped the jagged metal from his flesh. She pressed her sweatshirt into the wound as the blood began to pour out from the debris' release. She forced him to hold onto it himself for a moment while she dug around in her bag for stimpacks. She wasn't sure how many she'd dispensed into him before she started to wonder if there was a threshold… a number of stimpacks you could inject into someone before their use became unsafe.

"Hey," he was saying, holding her wrists lightly as she was about to inject another, "You did good, boss."

She looked up at him, he seemed alert, pleased even. The pain that had wracked him mere moments ago seemed entirely gone. She nodded slowly, sitting back and allowing herself to breathe again. She removed the bloody sweatshirt from his side, revealing new, pink skin where the laceration had been. She dug into her bag and pulled out two prepared syringes of RadAway, sticking one into MacCready's arm before using the other on herself. After a few moments of breathing deeply the sickness in her stomach subsided, whether due to the RadAway or her ability to calm herself down, she wasn't sure.

"I'm so sorry, are you ok?" she asked.

"Of course," he said, "I'm probably better than I was to start with, I think you might have put a dozen stims in me."

"Yeah… sorry, I was kind of on auto-pilot," she said distantly.

"If that's how your instincts function, you'll do just fine out here," he said, "Was that your first… 'atomic interaction'?"

"Yeah…" she said, "Unless you count the big ones that started all of this."

"You saw the bombs go off?" he asked, seeming surprised. She nodded slowly as she helped him up, walking him over toward the dirty mattress he had dragged in earlier.

"It was far away, but yes. We barely got to the vault in time," she said as she helped him sit against the wall, then returned to grab her bag and bring it over toward him. "Sorry I had to make you all… naked," she said, rummaging around in her pack for another shirt for him to wear.

"No worries, women try to get me naked all the time, I'm used to it," he said with a charming smile. She rolled her eyes, then offered the shirt out to him. Though he still seemed sore, he was capable of pulling it on himself without too much difficulty.

"Is this… a woman's shirt?" he asked, looking down at the way his arms and shoulders bulged from the slim cut.

"Sorry, I don't carry any children's sizes around with me," she said, then dodged him as he tried to playfully kick at her for revenge. She circled wide, then slid down the wall to sit next to him, sighing heavily, "In retrospect, that may have not been the best idea."

He chuckled nervously, "Maybe not, but where's the fun in that?"

"That's what I keep saying," she said with a grin, relieved that he didn't seem angry with her.

"Don't get me wrong," he said, his tone becoming more serious, "I find it very amusing how entertained you seem by all of this, but I have to be honest… I feel like you should be more… shocked by it all. Dismayed, disheartened. Anything else, really."

"Yeah… it's complicated," she replied.

"One more shot of bourbon complicated?" he asked with a charming grin, producing the bottle of bourbon seemingly from thin air. All that and the bottle of liquor had survived. Maybe there _was_ a God.


	3. Bourbon

She took the bottle gratefully, taking a deep drink.

"It's taken some getting used to, to say the least," she said, handing the bottle back to MacCready, "My husband was a solider, so I had an idea of what war could bring. But all this? Never in my wildest imagination did I think this world would have been the result of it all."

"But you saw it coming?" he asked.

"The threat of the end was such that it became common place. I never knew a time when certain doom wasn't imminent, it was just part of life. But then it kept not happening. Until it did."

"Even with threat of apocalypse… it had to have been better than all this," he said then took another drink from the bottle.

"Well… certainly. I was happy, I guess. A relative happiness… on today's scale it might be like… finding a whole herd of sleeping radstags," she joked, earning her a smile. "But I can't afford to dwell on it. That's not where I am now, that's not who I can be. Just like all these… creatures… we have now, things adapt. If the environment becomes inhospitable … you die or you adjust. I can't die just yet, so I have to adjust."

"Just to play devil's advocate here… it could be argued that you could adjust but still not find it fun to day drink, purposefully find things to kill, and blow up herds of robots."

She smirked at him, "That's kind of my point. I know what the outcome of all this will be. I know I will more than likely die trying to find my son. So, all of this, now, the searching and hunting and waiting and planning… the being stupid… all the in between, this is my life. This is the part where I get to live, however short of a span it may be. So I intend to enjoy it."

She took the bottle of bourbon back and enjoyed a dutiful pull.

"It's admirable how both optimistic and pessimistic that viewpoint manages to be, Cryo," he said, pleasantly impressed.

"Oh no, you cannot start calling me that."

"It's already happened, move on," he said, waiting for her to continue with a smug look on his face. After leveling a sizable glare at him, she resigned.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm still floored by the travesty of it - whereas, I imagine you all cannot even see it anymore," she said.

"I don't think any of us are saying this world is all sunshine and puppies," he said.

She smiled, then attempted to explain, "No… I just mean… the juxtaposition is jarring. Imagine it reversed - what if you woke up tomorrow, and this blighted landscape was suddenly green, virulent, full of life? The kind of life that doesn't want to eat you for dinner or shoot you in the head?"

"I've had that dream," he said.

"Really?" she asked with astonishment.

"Yes, humans still dream," he said dryly, accepting the bottle back from her to take another drink.

"Not that, you dork - just that you've dreamt about a world you've never experienced."

"Don't you ever dream about things you've never seen?" he asked.

"I suppose so, yes," she agreed, "It's interesting though… kind of promising, right?"

"How so?" he asked, coughing lightly as the not-so-smooth bourbon burned his throat.

"That somewhere inside… you know this isn't how it was supposed to be. Despite generations of separation, your subconscious knows the world is supposed to be different."

He nodded slowly, taking another drink before passing the bottle back to her. She accepted, taking a drink herself while she waited for his response.

"I suppose so. It's a bit _fanciful_ , maybe," he said. She returned his wary look with a bashful grin and took another drink, her cheeks flushing with warmth. Was she drunk already?

"Honestly…" he continued, his own face starting to redden with inebriation, "I just don't want to think about it most of the time. I know there's ideas… thoughts that the world could recover, but… it's a possibility so far removed. This life is about the here and now, it has to be. Thinking ahead like that… it will get you killed."

"Maybe that will be our thing," she said reflectively. He looked to her questioningly. "You know, our dynamic. You'll be mister sad faced pessimist, and I'll be miss happy, plucky optimist."

"Plucky?" he said skeptically.

"Yeah… ok. Maybe not plucky," she assented, sliding down the wall into a slouched position.

"I don't think we need to worry about a dynamic. Clearly we already work pretty well together, considering we somehow survived the night," he said, peaking out toward the flaming wreckage on the racetrack.

She nodded in agreement but added, "We have yet to fully survive the night, Mac."

"Mac?" he said, shaking his head, "No."

"If you're going to call me Cryo, I'm going to call you Mac. Until I figure out something worse."

He made a pouty face, and though it made her want to comment on his age again, her bourbon-muddled mind didn't allow her to formulate an acceptable response.

"I'll take first watch," he said, seeming to understand her comment on survival, "I'm a bit hopped up on stims at the moment." She wasn't about to argue. The spikes of adrenaline caused by accidentally igniting a nuclear reaction a few dozen yards away, then thinking MacCready was going to die, combined with the half bottle of bourbon she'd just consumed, were resulting in a swimming head and faltering vision. She leaned to get a better view out the half-destroyed wall that revealed the skyline through broken boards and shattered windows.

"Wake me in a few hours. It'll be about halfway to dawn when you see the first sliver of moon over that building," she said and he nodded. Her father had been an astronomer, and though as a child the countless hours spent watching the stars had seemed like an infernal tragedy, these days the knowledge proved ever useful. She settled down on the mattress next to MacCready who stayed sitting half up against the wall, rifle draped across his chest.

"Safety on," he said quietly. That seemed to be his way of saying goodnight, but before she could respond she'd fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.

She awoke slowly, the sun reflecting off a half-shattered window across the street and hitting her squarely in the eyes as it continued its slow ascent. The sun? She sat up suddenly, looking to MacCready who snoozed peacefully in roughly the exact position he was in when she had fallen asleep. She smacked his chest with the back of her hand and he woke with a start, fumbling around for his rifle.

"MacCready!" she growled in a low voice.

"Oh…" he said, gritting his teeth, "Sorry, Cyro, must have dozed off."

"Don't call me that," she glared, "You were supposed to wake me! You're lucky we weren't ambushed after all the ruckus we caused here last night."

"You…" he said looking up at her bashfully, "Ruckus… _you_ caused."

She smacked his chest again.

"Ok, ok," he said, standing up then offering a hand to help her, which she completely ignored, stomping to her feet petulantly.

"Let's head back before our luck really does run out," she said, grabbing her rifle and heading down the stairs toward Diamond City.


	4. Case Files

"Well aren't you just full of surprises," MacCready said quietly as the lock finally gave way to her manipulations. She raised an eyebrow at him as she opened the door slowly, sneaking inside and waiting for him to pass as she shut the door tightly behind them.

They'd spent the last three days going through some of Nick Valentine's outstanding case files. They'd been successful in solving one of them, but had been struggling with their current charge, finding the location of one Earl Sterling, a bartender at the Dugout Inn who had recently gone missing. After attempting to charm the mayor's bitchy receptionist for a key to his house, they had given up and instead had a few beers to pass the time as they awaited nightfall so they could just break in.

"A handful of weeks together, and you think you know everything about me," she said with mock scorn, shaking her head. "Have a look around, this guy can't have just fallen off the face of the earth."

"Falling off the face of the earth seems to be an issue for Commonwealth folk these days," MacCready said as he began to pick through some junk piled on a set of shelves at the end of a staircase. "You don't think it could have been the Institute?"

"It could have, sure," she said, walking up to join him, "But I'm not about to jump to that conclusion. They're obviously up to no good - but Piper is a bit paranoid about it I think."

"A bit, yeah," he agreed dryly. She pulled some files off the shelf and fingered through them, but found nothing unusual. She tossed the box back on the shelf, knocking some empty cans over in the process. Aluminum cans!

"What are you taking that shi- …stuff… for?" he asked as he turned around to climb the stairs toward the loft.

"I need aluminum, Mac, leave me alone," she said, stuffing the cans into her bag grumpily. He chuckled as he climbed the stairs and fell out of view. She made her way into the living area where a desk, couch and series of filing cabinets lined the walls. She dug through the filing cabinets, mostly empty, then sat at the desk to dig through the drawers.

After coming up with nothing, she noticed a bottle of Gwinnett Stout on top of the desk. She grabbed it and shrugged, if Earl was still alive, they would find him, so she was sure he would be willing to give up a beer or two as payment. And if he wasn't alive, well, then it didn't matter. She popped the cap off on the edge of the desk and took a long swig, passing it to MacCready as he came into the room. He accepted it in stride, tossing it back as he made his way toward a run down dresser.

"Are we alcoholics yet?" he asked.

"I think one of the qualifications is drinking alone," she said, crossing toward him to take the beer back, "So, as long as we stick together…"

She lifted it towards him amiably then took the final swig, receiving an accepting grin in return. She set the empty bottle down and started to pick through the cushions of the couch.

"Here we go," she said, picking a crumpled receipt out from behind a cushion.

"Mega Surgery Center," she said, showing it to MacCready, "If he was in trouble, maybe he needed to change his look and get out of town?"

"Not really a big enough bill for a major surgery," he pointed out.

"True," she said, looking over the receipt again. "Well, it's the best lead we've got. Let's talk to Doctor Sun about it in the morning."

Over the last few days they seemed to be making a point out of not sleeping, so they instead headed to the Dugout Inn for drinks. They forewent an enticing bottle of whisky in favor of simple beer so they would't be too far gone by the time the surgery center opened in a few hours. They sat across a table from each other on the patio out front as she outlined for MacCready the details of her encounter with Kellogg and her plan to find the missing Institute scientist. She didn't mention _where_ exactly that pursuit would lead her, she didn't want him to think she had completely lost her mind.

"My contact at the Brotherhood of Steel is finishing up a set of power armor for me - then I'll be ready to head out again," she said.

"I admire your commitment with all of this. You're so focused on it," he said with veneration. She was as surprised by his sentiment as by how pleased it made her feel. MacCready admired her? She had originally hired the man simply to annoy Nick, who had insisted she spend more time getting used to her new circumstances before she delved headfirst into pursuing Kellogg. In retrospect it was excellent advice, advice that had saved her life, but at the time she was blinded by impatience. So she'd petulantly told Nick she'd hired MacCready and they were going to go find trouble, and maybe that would gain her enough experience in this world to suit him. Now, however, it seemed they might become legitimate friends.

"Thanks, Mac… however, I think that drive sometimes makes me a little… impatient. Maybe dangerously so," she said.

"I get that… it's why you have your friends to keep you in check," he said with a charming grin. Apparently he was also considering their friendship. They clinked their bottles together in a cheers and took a drink.

"There's some things I've been meaning to deal with for a long time, but… I seem to be good at finding excuses to avoid them," he explained.

"Alright, color me intrigued," she said. He took a drink, looking like he was considering exactly what to tell her.

"I told you about my son… how he's sick?" he said, and she nodded, "Well, a couple weeks ago I got some intel about a possible cure."

She about spit her drink back up in surprise, "What? Why didn't you tell me?"

"It's dangerous - it's on lock down in some facility that's overrun by ferals," he explained.

" _Dangerous_ is what we do for breakfast, Mac," she said persuasively.

"What happened to tempering each other, keeping each other in check?" he said, his look pleased but cautious.

" _You_ said that, not me," she said, going to stand up. How MacCready could sit there so casually and not go charging in, guns hot, to try and save his son, was totally beyond her. She was ready to go, right now.

"Alright, settle down," he said, putting a hand on her arm to get her to sit down again, "I appreciate how gung-ho you are about this, but I'm still waiting for my contact to get back to me with the passcode to disable the lockdown."

"I can hack it," she said, wiggling her fingers to mime typing.

"By now I do trust in your unprecedented hacking skills, however this is supposed to be uncrackable," he said and she settled back into her chair with a pout.

"Very well… you'll tell me as soon as you hear something?"

"Hey, you paid me to join you, not the other way around. I can't ask you to risk your life for me," he said. In the last few weeks, she'd all but forgotten the original arrangement they'd made in the back room of The Third Rail.

"Yeah, yeah, and then I helped you take out Winlock and Barnes, and then you insisted on giving my caps back, and I refused, but you gave them anyways, and then I started sneaking the caps back into your pack when you weren't looking. So we're even," she said.

"Seriously?" he asked, unzipping his bag to try and find his cap stash.

"Aren't we past that Mac?" she asked. "We're friends, we've got to be. Otherwise," she said, holding her bottle up to the light to eye the remainder of her beer, "We're just two alcoholics."

He gave up on finding the caps to look up at her unassumingly. She smiled at him genuinely, a look he returned, though he seemed apprehensive. She knew there was still more to learn about MacCready, but from what she'd found out so far, he hadn't ever had much reason to trust other people. She knew it might take time to earn his confidence, but she was certain it'd be worth it.


	5. Nick's Wisdom

The next morning, they talked to Doctor Sun and found out what really happened to Earl Sterling. They were in the cellar that had been dug below the Mega Surgery Center, their guns aimed at Doc Crocker, who stood staring at them maniacally while he held Earl's dismembered arm. She should call the city guard or arrest him, she knew she should. That was the society she came from, there were checks and balances, government and justice, innocent until proven guilty, all that, and those were still her instincts, however useless they might be now.

But this guy was _just so crazy._ And… like she'd said just a few nights before, that wasn't her world anymore. She was going to have to adapt to stay relevant, to not die, and there'd be no time to hesitate. She pulled the trigger before she even realized she'd made the decision. The doctor roared in anger as the bullet struck him in the chest, but instead of grabbing at the wound in pain as one might expect, he reached down and picked up a bone saw and ran toward them.

She was a bit shocked by the sight of it, a bloody, rampaging, lunatic doctor charging at her with a dismembered arm in one hand and a saw in the other - one that still had Earl's remains hanging off of it. She hadn't reacted one way or another before she heard another gunshot and the man's head snapped back as he fell to the ground, instantly dead.

She turned to MacCready who casually reloaded his weapon, giving her a small nod, "That guy was nuts, boss, you made the right call."

So he'd been privy to her hesitation… she wasn't sure if it was good or bad that he could read her so easily. Though her instinct was to go drown the gruesomeness of the situation in more alcohol, she instead headed back to Nick's office to try and drum up more work to immerse herself in. MacCready followed dutifully. Though he held no hesitation in the killing of the guilty, she could tell he was as nauseated as she was to find the state Earl's remains had been in.

"When was the last time you slept?" Nick asked as he sat across from her at his desk, drumming his fingers together in judgement. She picked at her nails and didn't look at him, instead looking back at MacCready for assistance.

"It may have been a couple days…" MacCready answered regretfully. Nick's expressions were difficult to discern sometimes, but now she was certain of the disappointment behind his exasperated glare.

"Maybe you should head back to Sanctuary Hills, get some rest?" Nick suggested, in a way that didn't seem like a request.

"If there's more I can do here to help, I'd love to stay," she said.

"Kid, I know you want to keep busy till we can head out, but you need to take care of yourself too."

She was reluctant, but she knew he was right. Nick had become like a wise uncle to her over the last couple months, and though he wasn't always there to stop her from doing stupid things, she would often find herself thinking about what his reaction might be before she did, like some kind of proxy synthetic guardian angel.

"Danse said he'd have the power armor ready in a week or two," she said, "Will you be ready to head out then?"

"Absolutely. Just make sure you're safe. The power armor will be great, but you may want to stock up on meds too."

"I will, I have a stash at home. Or… in Sanctuary Hills. I'll head back for a few days, I'm sure Preston will need something from me," she said, giving Nick a grateful smile. She turned to go and found MacCready looking at her expectantly.

"Sanctuary Hills? That's where you used to live right?"

"The same," she affirmed.

"Want some company? It's a bit of trek to get up there, might be some hostiles to take care of on the way."

She considered it for a moment. She wasn't sure why the man wasn't taking the opportunity to scuttle back to Goodneighbor and continue to get up to whatever shenanigans she could only imagine were commonplace for him. However he'd proven reliable and was a good shot… she wasn't about to complain if he wanted to keep watching her back.

"Why not?" she said, "Thanks, Mac."

"We talked about you calling me that…" he said scornfully as he opened the door for her. Nick's look was unreadable as she turned to wave goodbye then give Ellie a nod, though the woman was smirking at her strangely.

They headed out the gates and north through the ruins of the city. She tried not to mention _every_ time she had a memory of a place and what it was like before the war, though MacCready seemed genuinely interested most of the time. They got out of the city streets and into the rolling plains as the sun began to set.

They had walked in silence for a long time, one that felt strangely comfortable despite how little time they had known one another. She supposed that was another outcome of this new world - that everywhere you go you're walking into battle. It was easier to be at ease with someone who kept saving your life, despite how long you'd known each other.

"You're going to the Glowing Sea?" he asked suddenly. She looked over her shoulder at him, but was unable to gauge his shadowed expression as the sun set behind him. "You didn't say as much… but I'm not totally oblivious, Cryo. Power armor, meds, a fugitive that the Institute can't even track down?"

"That's where Shaun's trail leads. I have to," she said plainly.

"That's beyond dangerous."

"I know," she said casually. He didn't say anything more, but she could feel the charged air between them. He wasn't about to leave it at that.


	6. Sanctuary

It took a full week before he brought it up again. He had fit in surprisingly well with the settlers at Sanctuary Hills. It was interesting, if not shocking, to watch him slip into a leadership roll. He seemed to resist the urge at first, watching them all work from the shade of the porch, or while cooking a meal over the fire. They only had to fail three times at raising the recruitment beacon before he marched over and insisted they step aside before 'the da- … stupid… thing fell and crushed them all'.

After that, Preston had returned, and though the two would occasionally butt heads, the minuteman grew more amenable to his presence with every passing day, particularly the more the former gunner helped out. And though MacCready would never admit it, he'd fallen _hopelessly_ in love with Dogmeat.

He was crouched on the ground just outside the workshop, rough-housing with the hound and giggling when he decided to continue their conversation, right from where it had left off, as if no time had passed at all.

"Let me go with you," he said and she stopped tinkering with the turret module she was trying to repair and looked up to give him a surprised look. There were a lot of things she thought he might say about it. She'd expected him to warn her, to list the ways in which she was being naive, or maybe tell some story about a guy he once knew that went and came back with another appendage, or a head, or had merged somehow with a Mirelurk. But she definitely had not expected him to say _that_.

"No way MacCready," she said, gaping at him in an attempt to gauge his seriousness. He stood up and walked toward the workbench, Dogmeat whimpering lightly as his playmate began to ignore him.

"You've got another set of power armor right here," he said, motioning across the patio to the stand that held a weathered suit of power armor, "Let me wear it, let me go with you." She was surprised at his fervency, but was not about to be persuaded.

"If I had a safe set of power armor to use, do you think I'd be here building turrets, or solving mysteries in Diamond City or blowing up robot racetracks? No way. That set needs major repairs, things that I can't fix, things that will take time. That's the whole reason I'm waiting for one from the Brotherhood."

"Then I'll get a rad-suit, I think Fallon's had one last time I was in there," he said.

"A hazmat suit?" she asked incredulously, "Jesus, no, Mac, that's not safe."

"It'll be fine, I've worn them before," he argued.

"Is there something you need me to pick up for you? I can just grab it while I'm there," she said dryly.

"Come on, there's no ulterior motive," he said, sounding a bit offended. She hadn't meant it harshly, though she could see how it might come off that way.

"I'm pretty certain this is all just one big ulterior motive, but I haven't figured it out yet," she said, and that time she knew it sounded harsh.

"Ouch, cold as ice, Cryo, cold as ice," he said, holding a hand over his heart as if she'd shivved him in it. She rolled her eyes and continued her work on the module.

"What is it then, why do you want to come so bad? You think I can't handle myself?" she asked. He reached down to put a hand on the screwdriver she was using, forcing her to pause. She looked up at him.

"I'm being serious," he said.

"Me too. You said it yourself, it's beyond dangerous. I'm not going to ask you to risk your life - "

"You're not asking me, I'm offering," he clarified.

"We're not talking about this," she insisted, going back to her work again.

"You don't trust me, do you? Man, I fall asleep on watch _one_ time…" he said and she rolled her eyes at him again. "You really think I've got some kind of scheme planned?"

"It's not that," she said genuinely, "I do trust you - I've trusted you with my life practically every day since we met. Enough people have died and will die in my vengeful rampage, I don't need to drag more good people down with me."

"What about Nick? You're letting him go with you."

"Nick's different."

"Because you trust him more than me?"

"No," she said her voice beginning to rise, "Because he doesn't have a _beating heart_ , so, a he's a little harder to get killed."

"She's not lyin', kid," came the soft croon of Nick's voice. She turned around in surprise to find the synth standing casually against the house behind them, drawing on a cigarette as if he'd been there for hours. He dropped it on the ground and stomped it out as he walked toward them.

"I'll let you two talk…" MacCready said dejectedly, walking across the street just in time to stop a settler from throwing his back out trying to lift a generator by himself.

"Sorry, Nick…" she said, putting her tools down and wiping the grease from her hands with a rag.

"Nothing to apologize for. I thought he'd of scattered to the winds a long time ago," he said skeptically, eyeing MacCready as he continued to help the settler.

"Me too, but honestly he's been a ton of help around here. We got a recruitment beacon set up, more turrets built. He has some… experience… running a community," she said with a smile, "So, it's been nice having him here."

"Oh, is that why?" Nick said, turning back to look at her. His tone was… strange. She raised an eyebrow at him, but was interrupted from questioning him about it as Preston approached.

"This must be Nick Valentine," he said, reaching out to shake the synth's hand firmly, "I've heard a lot about you, sir."

"Likewise," Nick drolled, turning to give her a suggestive look. He seemed to be in a very strange mood.

"General, I'm going to head to the diner to sell a few things, I'll be back before nightfall," Preston said.

"Sounds good, be safe," she replied, "Take Dogmeat if you want."

"Nice to meet you, sir," he said to Nick, giving them both a wave as he whistled for Dogmeat to follow then headed toward the bridge out of town. She looked back to catch MacCready staring after Preston with a creased brow before continuing to help the settler coil the power lines they were relocating. When she looked back to Nick, he was holding her Brotherhood of Steel radio out toward her.

"Son of a bitch," she cursed, taking it back from him. She must have left the damn thing at his office.

"Danse radioed. He wasn't overly pleased to have to speak to me, but he did say he's got the armor done. I figured it'd be quicker to run up here and tell you than to wait for you to return."

"Thanks, Nick," she said gratefully.

"You ready for this?" he asked. The finality in his tone would have stirred doubt in a normal, sane person, she thought. But when it came to finding Shaun, reason held no place.

"Ready as I'll ever be," she replied, "Can you stay the night? I can have Danse send a Vertibird first thing in the morning."

"You're the boss, kid," he said.


	7. Squirrel-on-a-Stick

That night, the majority of the settlers at Sanctuary Hills had gathered around the cooking fire to help prepare a meal of roasted corn and grilled meat. Corn they had grown themselves, something that made her immeasurably proud of all they'd been able to accomplish here over the last few months. Preston had marched back into town with a shocking number of dead squirrels, and though it wasn't her favorite of the new delicacies she had been introduced to, having real meat was always a pleasure, in whatever form.

She stood at the workbench on the patio overlooking the yard, continuing her work on the infernal turret module by lantern light. She was about three accidental shocks from giving up on the thing entirely and chucking it into the river.

Preston gave her a smile from across the yard as he looked up from his task of squirrel-skinning. MacCready was next to him in the assembly line, receiving the bloody meat and chopping it into small bits without so much as a grimace, like he was joyfully picking fresh flowers. She figured someday she would be able to look at bloody raw meat, still in the shape of the creature it came from and not have the urge to upchuck.

Nick lounged casually on a mostly intact sofa they'd drug out from the Rosa's house while clearing it for demolition. There had been something strangely gratifying in the act of defiling her former neighbors homes and turning the whole street into her own compound. Some of her neighbors had been nice enough, but for the most part they had been judgmental, scheming tools. At least in this world, if someone wanted you dead, they were usually very upfront about it.

"Something going on with you and Preston?" Nick asked suddenly, eyeing him as the minuteman continued meal preparations. She turned to give the synth a sideways look.

"Preston?" she said with a laugh, "No way. Preston is great, and we work well together, but no, there's nothing going on."

"What about Mac?" he said, almost too quickly. Her instinct was to laugh as well, but for some reason she didn't.

"No," she said with a small scoff, then as the air filled awkwardly around her pause she scrambled to elaborate, "No, just no. You call yourself a detective? Be serious."

"Come on, kid," he said, standing up and walking over toward her, "He wants to follow you into the Glowing Sea?"

She sighed, "So you were there that whole time, then huh? You duplicitous little spy…"

"I'm just saying… if that's not love, I don't know what is."

"Do _you_ love me, Nick?" she asked pointedly. He had also agreed to go with her, after all.

"Of course I do, kid," he said, patting her on the back as she rolled her eyes.

"Not what I meant," she said, looking back down to continue her work on the module.

"Listen… here, in this world, things are shorter lived, timespans are compressed. People die younger, and more often. So they marry young, make babies young. Do stupid things like blow up a whole herd of radioactive robots _simultaneously_."

"How did you hear about that?" she asked incredulously.

"I've got my sources, kid. The point is… you may not want to wait to tell him how you feel," he said, then gave her a small nod before turning and wandering away toward the campfire.

What was that all about? She would admit to having engaged in some harmless flirting with MacCready, but where did the detective get the idea that they had feelings for each other? Nick hadn't spent more than a handful of minutes with the both of them since she'd found MacCready arguing with those goons in the back room of the The Third Rail.

She was surprised by the feeling the memory elicited. At the time she was skeptical, annoyed, suspicious. But now she just remembered his magnetic smile and the way his face seemed to flush when she tried to charm him into accepting less caps to fight alongside her. Holy shit, was Nick right?

"Hey Cryo," he said it softly, but she jumped in surprise anyway. MacCready stepped out of the darkness and into the light of the lantern, holding two wooden sticks of cooked meat out toward her.

"Brought you your favorite," he said jokingly.

"Oh gee, thanks," she said, taking the offering from him. He sat down on a stool next to the workbench, sliding the meat off the end of the stick with his teeth before biting the chunk off the end. Like a pro, like he'd done it a thousand times, which he probably had, she realized. She wondered how much about life he'd learned from the other children at Little Lamplight and how much he'd had to teach himself over the years. They were from such different worlds…

She shoved the module aside with one hand and hopped up to sit on the workbench. She suddenly felt nervous about having to attempt to eat the food in front of him, she knew it would be a repulsive act as she certainly lacked the grace MacCready had honed in his years of practice. She settled for nibbling on the edges, letting the meat fall off the stick and into her hand as she freed it.

She was painfully aware of Mac's every look and move, though he just continued gnawing away at his dinner in silence. Why did Nick have to go and make it all weird? This was MacCready, after all. Two nights ago they'd had a _belching_ _contest_ after finding a twelve pack of Gwinnett Lager inside the Rosa's house as they were preparing to tear down the walls. It was basically the least romantic thing that had ever happened.


	8. Declaration

MacCready seemed aware of her awkward presence, pausing halfway through his second stick of meat to look up at her with a raised eyebrow.

"You ok over there?" he asked.

"Nick and I are leaving tomorrow," she said suddenly. He didn't say anything for a few moments, just nodded almost imperceptibly then set the rest of his food down.

"I don't suppose I'm going to be able to convince you to let me come?" he asked quietly.

"Absolutely not," she said. Her thoughts on the matter were as firm as ever.

"I can be an asset, you know I can," he said, forgoing the remainder of his meal as he stood and approached her.

"Oh ok sure, now that you've asked a dozen times, I guess I'll finally change my mind," she said dryly.

"Come on, Cryo," he said, following her as she abandoned the rest of her own dinner and hopped down to head toward her house.

She said nothing as she opened the front door and marched down the hallway, MacCready continuing his argument as he trailed a few steps behind her, "I've stuck with you this long, and we've proven our battle acumen… heck, we killed a deathclaw together! We've watched each other's backs, we're good at it. Let me help you with this one too."

She stepped into her old bedroom where she had set up a bed, dresser and a few chests to give herself a somewhat private place to stash things and relax occasionally, though it had yet to be tested on the latter. She dug a rucksack out from under her bed and began to pick through the drawers of the dresser for supplies, stimpacks, radiation medication and ammo.

"Mac, I have very few people I can call friend in this world - I don't want to get them killed if I can avoid it," she said seriously.

"I'm reliable, you know I am," he argued.

"It's not your reliability that's in question," she said, then added, "Did you stay this whole time just to try and convince me to bring you?"

"No… well, not exactly," he said as she shook her head and continued to shove ammo into the bag. "You guys needed people - I stayed to help. I swear."

She creased her brow at him, he seemed to be telling the truth, but not all of it.

"I appreciate that you stayed, Mac. I really do. And even more so that you want to have my back on this, but I _won't_ let you get involved. Regardless of it being one of the most dangerous places to go in the Commonwealth - I'm about to go make some powerful enemies, if I haven't already. Being seen with me at all is a risk, nevertheless following as I march a direct line to the Institute's most wanted fugitive."

"You think I'm afraid of the Institute?" he asked incredulously.

"No," she said flatly, "Which is exactly why you shouldn't get involved."

He said nothing, his expression distant as she continued to fill her bag with supplies. She wasn't sure if she'd angered him or if he was preparing to continue his petition from another angle, but he certainly didn't seem ready to give up.

"Is that really why you stayed?" she found herself asking again. There was heavy silence between them for a few long moments as they stared at one another.

"Ah… screw it," he said suddenly, and she dropped her bag in surprise as he reached out and pulled her into him, locking her in a fierce embrace. He wrapped both arms around her firmly enough that she wasn't sure she could free herself even if she wanted to. There was no resolve left for that however, it had instantly melted the moment their lips touched, and all she could do now was stand paralyzed in his arms.

"General?" she heard Preston calling for her. She didn't move an inch but MacCready stepped away in surprise, and they both looked toward the doorway as the minuteman's figure emerged from the darkness of the hallway. He'd been too late to see anything, but the way they both stood and gaped at him probably said enough.

Preston's expression was unreadable as he took in the situation, then said slowly, "Sorry… your radio was going off, Danse is looking for you."

He held the radio out toward her and she took it from him slowly, "Thanks, Preston."

He nodded, giving her and MacCready another calculating look before turning and leaving.

"Danse, do you copy?" she called into the radio.

After a moment, Danse's gruff voice crackled through the radio, "Copy, Knight. Update on your request from earlier - we've got an all-hands-on-deck operation first thing in the morning. I can excuse you from it, but if you want a Vertibird to pick you up, I've got to send it now."

"Copy, Paladin, I can make that work," she said.

"On our way to you, be there in twenty. Danse, out," he replied. She set the radio down slowly, looking up to MacCready who looked at once guilty, dismayed and defiant.

"If you think that made me _more_ likely to let you come, you've lost your mind," she said.

"I feel like I may have…" he said quietly. She wasn't sure how to take that… did he regret what he'd done?

He answered the question quickly as he took her face gently in his hands and pulled her close to him again, locking his lips around hers, more gently this time but the passion was just as strong. She let herself revel in it for a few moments, wrapping her own arms around him to pull him close to her. She didn't even know how to _begin_ to fathom what this was… but if she was walking into the kind of danger she thought she was, she would let herself have this, whatever it meant.

He pulled away, keeping her face in his hands as he looked her in the eye, "I only want you to let me protect you."

"Then let me do the same," she said. His face fell, but not with sadness or anger. He looked… startled… speechless. Judging by that look, no one had ever said something like that to him before. He seemed unsure of how to respond for a long time, as if he wanted to believe in her sincerity but couldn't quite bring himself to.

"You come back in one piece," he said fiercely. She nodded and let him kiss her again.

She sent MacCready to warn Nick of their imminent departure while she quickly finished packing her bag with supplies. Her chest felt heavy with what should have been raw nerves but was instead electrified anticipation, the kind she always had when she was on the verge of discovering something about Shaun. There was a new feeling there now too though, lower in her stomach… she was going to miss Mac.

Her hair whipped around her face as the Vertibird's propellers threw wind out at them as it hovered close to the ground. She let Nick climb on first so she could steal a look back at MacCready, who caught his hat casually in midair as it escaped from the top of his head, his eyes not straying from her.

She felt momentary remorse for forcing him to stay behind. If the situation had been reversed… she couldn't imagine letting him go do something like this without her, to not even get the chance to have his back when he was about to walk into something so dangerous. However, she knew by now that she could trust her instincts, so she knew she had made the right call. And leaving MacCready behind was giving her something she had never had since thawing out in that pod six months ago. A reason to come back alive.


	9. Irradiated

Just… a few… more… yards.

She was stomping slowly across the bridge toward Sanctuary. She had to stop halfway, pausing by the line of turrets that beeped dutifully as they patrolled the area behind her for hostiles. Though she'd kept up with consistent doses of RadAway since leaving the Glowing Sea, its effects seemed to be diminishing and the radiation poisoning she had endured was beginning to catch up with her.

She felt like she couldn't breathe. She fumbled with her helmet, her fine motor skills lacking due to the thick metal of the power armor suit. She finally found the release switches so she could pull the damn thing off and her head spun as she sucked in the fresh air too quickly.

"It's her!" she heard someone call. The light was dim, the sun mere minutes from setting, so all she could see were two shadowy figures on the guard tower across the bridge. One stepped down and began to approach her. She continued toward them, tossing her helmet on the ground dismissively as she stepped off the bridge, dusty clouds springing up from her feet as the weight of the armor hit the dry dirt. She wanted to lean forward, to brace herself on her knees, but it was not something the suit would allow her to do. She looked up as the settler approached her… then realized it wasn't a settler at all.

"You stayed…" she said airily, catching herself as she began to lean backward and lose her balance.

"Yeah…" MacCready said, his brow lined with worry. "Why don't you get out of that suit…"

She felt… dizzy… She managed to initiate the eject sequence, and as the armor released itself she felt her body give way. She knew she was falling backwards out of the suit, but she never felt herself hit the ground.

* * *

"Hey, boss…"

She heard his voice, but it seemed far away. She opened her eyes slowly and found herself lying in her bed in her old house. MacCready sat on a chair next to the bed… meds, food and water littering the ground around him. She wiped some sweat from her forehead and thought about sitting up. She could only think it however, she imagined if her body was its own person, it would have laughed out loud at her request.

"You've been out a couple days…" he explained.

"A couple days?" she asked with disbelief, her voice coming out cracked and dry from disuse. She knew she had pushed herself too far, but that seemed excessive.

"You did wake up a few times, just long enough to throw up and then fight us as we tried to put some food in you," he explained.

She shook her head, "I don't remember that at all."

"Yeah you were pretty out of it. You seem much better now though… when you dropped out of that power armor, you looked like total garbage," he said.

"Thanks, that's sweet of you to say," she grumbled, attempting to turn onto her side but giving up quickly as her stomach lurched and insides burned.

"That's MacCready, keeping it real," he said.

"Ugh, you cannot start talking about yourself in the third person."

"Oh no, it's not me as a _person_ … it's the MacCready _brand_ ," he replied, sitting back in his chair and popping the collar of his duster before crossing his arms casually.

"Careful, you're making me want to throw up again," she said dryly.

He forewent his casual slouch in the chair as he slid forward onto his knees at the side of the bed. He put his chin on the edge of the bed like a forlorn puppy and looked her in the eye. His expression was analytical… as one might appear when inspecting a dead body to see if it held any signs of life. After a few long moments, he said, "I'm very glad you're alive."

"Back at you," she replied. He lifted his head but stayed knelt by the bed.

"Right, because things got really dicey up here in suburbia, I'm lucky to have pulled through," he joked, then added more seriously, "I would have much rather marched through a massive sea of radiation, slaying ferals and radscorpians."

"And a deathclaw," she sighed, cringing at the memory of its vicious claws ripping her power armor's leg casing clean off the frame as she began an elegant tumble down the rocky hill she'd retreated towards. That had hurt.

MacCready looked at her as if she was joking, then his face fell blank and he set his forehead lightly on the edge of the bed when he realized she was being serious.

"It's better you didn't," she explained, "Otherwise we'd probably both be in this miserable state."

When he looked back up, his expression had hardened, his tone heavy, "Why did Nick let you walk back alone in that condition? You could have been killed."

"He didn't know how bad it was, I… muted the notifications on my Pip-Boy…"

"Fu- … da- … " he struggled for a while then sighed, apparently unable to come up with an acceptable response that didn't start with an expletive. He looked down at the floor again as he leaned his elbows on the bed, gripping the top of his hat firmly. After a moment he pulled it off, running rigid hands through his hair and breathing deeply, though it seemed an effort. He was silent for a long time.

"He's going to be pi- … angry… with you when he finds out," MacCready said.

" _If_ he finds out," she clarified, "And I know _you_ aren't going to tell him, because you value your life."

"That I do…" he said, "Although one might question that as I continue to let you run the show."

"Oh whatever, you live for our shenanigans."

"I think you mean I live _despite_ our shenanigans."

"How'd you even survive while I was gone, anyway?" she asked, "Did you just sit around and twiddle your thumbs?"

"Hey now, we got a lot done for your information. We finished the Rosa's storage shed, the new water pump is at about sixty percent, Sturges started building that new shelter down by the river like you wanted, and - most importantly - I finally got Dogmeat to sleep in bed with me."

She laughed but it was cut short by the pain it caused in her abdomen. Her insides felt… burnt. No, _smoldering_. Like all her organs and muscles were raw, exposed flesh, rubbing against one another painfully with any movement she attempted. She held her stomach gingerly as MacCready looked on with sympathy.

"I hope it was worth it… I hope you got what you needed," he said.

"I did," she said assuredly, "I found out how to get into the Institute."

"I'm sorry… _into the Institute?_ " he said, dismayed. She remembered then that she hadn't been entirely up front with MacCready about what kind of information she was going to get from Virgil, only that Shaun's trail led to him.

"Will it make you feel better to know that… I need your help?" she asked. He said nothing for a long time, rubbing his hands together in a way that was either nervous or seething or some of both.

"Like, I really, _really_ need your help…"

"What happened to not wanting me to get involved? Powerful enemies and all that?" he asked.

"Well… if my current condition proves anything… it's that we may be better at protecting each other when we stick together."

His look was completely unreadable as he continued to stare at her. She couldn't tell if he was about to gloat, guilt-trip her, stomp away in frustration or kiss her.

"What needs done?" he asked finally.

"I have to kill a courser," she said and braced herself as she awaited his reaction. To her surprise, he smiled widely.

"Ok, crazy lady, why don't you get some rest, you clearly need it," he said dismissively.

"Mac, I'm serious."

"Oh I know you are," he said, still smiling broadly as he stood up and pulled the blankets higher as if to tuck her in. He turned and walked toward the hallway, stopping in the doorway as she called after him.

"Mac, I know it's dangerous, but… you're the best shot I know," she said, "You might be my only chance."

"There's no question, Cryo," he said seriously, his smile fading as he turned back to look at her, "From now on, I follow wherever you lead, whether you want me there or not. You'll not walk away from me again."


	10. Drought

After a couple days of bedrest she finally felt ready to go outside. The sun was out, and though it felt like pins and needles on her bare skin, she was feeling particularly defiant toward Mother Nature, so she forewent the shade and sat on the bare concrete in the middle of the street. She chewed on a grilled mole rat leg Jun had provided and tried to not think about what she was eating. Dogmeat sat next to her devotedly, turning to lick her face every few minutes.

She sat turned into the sun, though she'd hidden behind a pair of aviator sunglasses and her husband's oversized military issue helmet, which hung lopsided off her head. She knew basking in the sun was its own form of radiation, but the star and its perfect distance away was what allowed life on this planet… however mutated and warped it had become at of the hands of man. So, she would greet it kindly, let it warm her soul.

MacCready dropped a bottle of water into her lap as he passed by with an armload of supplies. He continued toward the new storage shed they'd built on the Rosa's foundation. Other than to make a supply run to the diner this morning, he'd hardly left her side since she woke up.

"Hey General," Preston's voice broke her thoughts, and she looked up to find him looking down at her. "Do you think you should maybe get out of the sun for a while?"

She nodded, taking the bottle of water in hand and crawling to her feet slowly, Preston hovering to catch her should she lose her balance. She chugged the water as she walked with the minuteman toward the shade of the porch, letting him help her sit down on the Rosa's couch. Preston joined her, opening another bottle of water and passing it to her as she finished her first.

They sat in silence for a long time as they watched the others go about their work. Sturges had conscripted a handful of settlers to assist with carrying the building materials down the hill toward the new riverside structure they were building. MacCready and Jun were finishing moving supplies from various locations around the settlement to the new centralized supply shed, one they intended to have monitored and defended at all times.

"It hasn't rained in weeks," Preston said after a while, "We're ok for the moment but as our numbers continue to grow, that new water pump is going to become more and more necessary."

"What do we need to finish it?" she asked.

"Just a few parts, nothing MacCready and I can't drum up," he said.

"You guys getting along ok?" she asked. Though they'd been mostly civil toward one another since they met, she wouldn't say they were on track to becoming best friends.

"I'll admit, I was reluctant, at first… he seemed like nothing but a merc awaiting his next payday. But, he's helped out a lot around here… other than the last few days I guess," he said with a strange smile.

"Why's that?" she asked.

"He's been holed up in there with you. He didn't leave your side once while you were out," he explained. She picked at the lid to her water bottle as she continued to watch the settlers go about their business. She could feel Preston's eyes on her, he was waiting to see how she reacted, but she knew she'd managed to hide it well.

She actually felt a little… relieved. MacCready had made no romantic inclinations toward her since her return, save a slightly awkward moment when he attempted to help her change into some clean clothing… so she'd begun to wonder if he'd regretted what had happened between them. They'd certainly been caught up in the moment… the drama of her leaving so suddenly, walking into the unknown, neither of them knowing if she'd even come back. This new disclosure hardly said everything that needed said on the subject… but it did support the idea that he at least still cared for her, despite his silence on the matter.

"Not that I can blame him," Preston continued, and she ceded a small smile to the minuteman. "He really has become one of us, General. Whether that's because of loyalty to you or the settlement, I can't say, but I'm grateful either way."

"I suppose he's turning out to be a… pretty ok guy," she said, hoping it came off as vague as she intended it, neither too surprised or pleased… or suspicious? She didn't know exactly how she felt about MacCready, and she didn't need Preston or any of the others gawking at them expectantly and making it even more awkward.

"I thought he was going to leave a couple days after you left," Preston said, leaning back and opening a bottle of water for himself.

"Why's that?" she asked, unable to hide her curiosity.

"Some guy showed up in town, they talked for a while, MacCready gave him some caps and the guy left," he explained, "He was acting a little weird after that, he even packed a bag, but… never went anywhere."

Strange, what could that have been about? Then she sighed as it dawned on her. Time to yell at MacCready.

With concerted effort and an assist from a confused Preston, she rose off the couch and marched in MacCready's direction. He'd just taken a sack of rolled blankets into the storage shed and stacked it neatly on one of the shelves. She was standing ready for him when he came back out the door, hands on hips judgmentally.

"You got the code," she said, and he sighed.

"I'm still not stupid enough to go try again by myself," he said, then looked around in confusion, "How did you…?"

"Why didn't you tell me? We should be going, now," she said with urgency.

"Are you kidding? You can barely stand," he said.

"Every day counts, we can't waste time."

"I'm aware of that, but you're not ready. Maybe you're right, maybe I shouldn't wait, but I'll take someone else. I'll hire a merc," he said.

"Like hell you will," she replied sternly, "I'll be ready tomorrow."

"Je- … no way, you wouldn't even be ready to walk across the bridge out of Sanctuary by tomorrow," he said, looking like she had lost her mind.

"Three days," she said and he looked at her flatly for a few moments before responding.

"Five," he said finally.

"Four."

"Not a negotiation," he said firmly. "Five or I hire Preston."

"Preston?" she said, unable to subdue a grin.

"What?" he asked incredulously.

"You'd take Preston?"

"Why not? He's a good shot. We may not always get along perfectly, but… we have… common interests," he said. She raised an eyebrow at him inquisitively before she realized what it was he'd meant. Her? Really? That was certainly the most pointed thing he'd said on the subject, though it didn't appear like he intended to elaborate farther.

"Fine. Five days," she said. That'd give her three days to prove to him that she could be ready in four.


	11. Heat Wave

Mother Nature was apparently in the mood for continued retaliation, as a heat wave rolled in and sat itself firmly on top them for the next three days. That and the dry spell they'd had for weeks were compounding to create a major slow down in the settlement's work progress. As the sun approached zenith, most of the settlers made their way inside to seek the relative cool of shade. She was in no mood to be bossed around however, so she obstinately marched down to the river with an armload of clothing. In an effort to stay cool, she sat cross-legged in the water, rubbing the clothes with a small bar of salvaged soap and rinsing them before leaving them out to dry on a flat rock nearby. She missed washers and dryers.

"Are you absolutely certain that submerging yourself in irradiated water is the best idea?" MacCready's tone was disapproving, but knew itself to be futile.

"If you've got some clean water for me to traipse around in, I'd be more than happy to oblige," she said causally, standing to ring out her last shirt and lay it flat on the rock next to the others.

"Actually…" he said.

She rolled her eyes as she sat back down into the water, then in an affected tone, she mocked him, "Oh, in the _Capital Wasteland_ the water is like, so not poisonous for the most part. You can just drink it right out of the river, the Brotherhood may even bring you some bottles of it if you're very, very good - "

"Ok, ok," he said with a smile. He slipped his boots off and waded in, sitting down next to her in the water.

"I'm just saying," she said, "If you love D.C. so much…"

"And miss out on the warm reception of my friends here in the Commonwealth?"

She shoved him, slightly harder than she intended to, causing him to splash into the water as he reached out to catch himself.

"Careful, you might get some radiation in your eye," she joked as he wiped the water from his brow, then she yelped in surprise as he retaliated. She wasn't quick enough to catch herself, tipping over sideways into the river with a splash. Though the water was tepid, it still felt refreshing to be immersed in it. She missed showers.

"Feeling better, I see," he said with a mischievous smile. She returned herself upright, slicking her now wet hair back over her head.

"Oh… it's on," she said, scooping a handful of water into his face before turning over and running away, just barely escaping his grasp.

She was pleasantly surprised by her own stamina as she trudged through the water away from him, as well as her reflexes as she as she dodged and rolled before he could get to her. Though she wouldn't call it a combat trial, she was pleased to know she hadn't lost too much endurance after being holed up in that bedroom for the better part of a week.

She knew they were acting childish, kicking water at one another, chasing, laughing, wrestling playfully, but she couldn't bring herself to care. There wasn't a lot of opportunity for unadulterated fun in this world, at least that didn't end with some kind of chem addiction, so she was going to let herself have it, despite how stupid it was to throw liquid radiation around at one another.

She kept ahead of him for a long time, though she could tell he was holding back, being careful with her. She threw water in his direction again in an attempt to blind him, but he shielded his eyes and plowed right through the spray of water toward her, grabbing ahold of her wrists and twisting until her own arms crossed her chest, pinning her back to him. She knew she'd lost then, in close quarters he could easily overpower her. He proved as much by holding her almost completely horizontally a few inches above the water, threatening to dunk her in face-first. She couldn't stop herself from giggling as she threatened his life as retaliation, attempting to kick and thrash out of the hold, though he didn't relent.

She was not-so-pleasantly surprised by the sharp pain she suddenly felt in her chest. It didn't take MacCready long to realize she wasn't laughing any longer, and he released his hold on her to lift her back up onto her feet, keeping a grip on her shoulders to hold her upright as she swayed.

"What is it?" he asked, his tone alarmed. She looked down, shaking her head slowly and holding a hand to her chest as if pressure might somehow alleviate the pain. She felt like she couldn't breathe, but she had no idea why. This didn't feel like the episodes she'd had over the last few days when her body retaliated as she pushed it just a little too hard. Her muscles would cramp, her stomach would lurch, she'd tire easily… but it had never been like this, not like her heart seizing in her chest.

The memory flooded over her suddenly, playing back like it had a thousand times since it happened so many months ago, and she could never _not_ think it, whenever it was of a mind to be remembered. The gun to his head, the trigger being pulled, her husband falling dead in front of her as she tore at the glass that separated them. The firm lump in her chest ebbed long enough to allow her to breathe again, but the pain persisted all the same. Then it became clear what it was she was feeling… overwhelming guilt.

She finally looked up to meet MacCready's gaze. He looked terrified, like she might drop dead in his arms any second. What was she doing, was she crazy? She understood now what MacCready had meant when he said he thought he may have lost his mind… what was she thinking?

"Sorry…" she said, unable to hold his crestfallen gaze a moment longer as she turned and sloshed away back toward the settlement.


	12. Storm Front

She wasn't sure how long she'd been sitting on the floor of Shaun's room, but at some point the sun set. A notably cool wind had picked up, blowing through the openings in the walls that had been the windows to her son's room… two hundred years ago? She still had a difficult time fathoming it. She absentmindedly spun the rusty wheels of a toy car as she sat dejectedly in the middle of the room. She'd ignored the dinner bell that could have rung minutes or hours ago.

Mac didn't announce his arrival or ask permission, or say anything at all. He just walked right in and sat down in front of her, mirroring her as he crossed his legs underneath himself. His arrival had caused her heart to race, and he seemed to be able to sense as much as he waited until it had calmed down and the air leveled out between them before he spoke.

"I don't expect you to be ready to move on," he said finally. He'd proven to be exceptional at reading her, so she wasn't surprised that he'd caught on to what she was feeling.

"Truthfully…" he continued, "I don't even know if I am."

"You regret what happened?" she asked quietly, not looking up as she continued to pick at the car.

"Never," he said flatly, taking one of her hands in both of his. She set the toy down and looked up to gauge his expression, which was steely, yet tender. "Don't think I haven't considered the alternatives…" he continued, "It'd be easier to leave now, pretend like I never met you… don't be patient, don't wait to see what it could be… protect myself from the pain. After all, I can't lose you if I never had you to start with."

They sat in silence for a long time as the lump in her throat grew and her mind raced. Her trip to the Glowing Sea had been all about survival, she'd barely had time to process what happened between them, nevertheless think forward to what it could mean in the future. But he'd been here waiting for her, thinking about what it meant… considering the different outcomes, how many ways it could go wrong. And yet, he had made the decision to stay.

"Turns out… it isn't going to be that simple," he shook his head slowly, "Because this… this deserves to be done right. It's not something I can use up and throw away, or run from, or pretend like I don't care. So if that means being patient, I'm willing to wait. As long as it takes."

Damn… he was doing a good job of saying all the right things… Was he having to work at it, or was he just telling the truth and hoping she liked what she heard?

"So, you take the time you need… I will too," he said. "And for now, we'll get back on track to being friends."

She eventually nodded in agreement, though she was reluctant. She knew something about her feelings for MacCready were real, however complicated, and part of her knew that agreeing to be friends was agreeing to lie to herself and to him. But she couldn't move forward with it, not now at least. She didn't regret the kiss, but she knew how complicated this all was, and she wasn't sure how ready either of them were to deal with those issues.

He'd lost his wife only a few years ago, and she her husband less than a year ago… and they both had young children to try and take care of in a dangerous world. And yes, that gave them a lot in common, but those were also the things that could tear them apart, if they let them, if they didn't fight for it. Did she have that fight in her yet?

Kellogg was dead, but the wave of relief for avenging her husband's death that she was so certain would follow had never come. She'd never grieved him properly, she never had the chance. She'd opened his pod and knelt by his body in shock, then grabbed his ring and a gun and charged headlong into an unfamiliar, savage world… the approach was untenable to say the least.

"I think…" she said after a very long time, "…I need to bury him."

He didn't immediately react in any perceivable way, but after a while he nodded slowly.

"I think that's a really good idea," he said. He stood up and offered a hand to help her up, which she accepted.

"Friends?" he asked.

"Friends…" she agreed.

"But, like, _best_ friends," he insisted, "None of this second tier friend bull sh- … crap."

This forced a grin out of her, which she knew was his intended goal. He was never going to be able to stop making her smile. " _Best_ ," she agreed, "We can make some matching bracelets and braid each other's hair later."

"I'm assuming that's some kind of throw-back joke?" he asked and she nodded.

"Good because I can't braid," he said with a grin.

So they hugged it out… but not like two friends would. They were failing at it already. It lingered, it was heavy, too easy to melt into each other. It was too effortless to enjoy his smell, to feel his warmth, to let his arms contain her. She knew then it would never be as simple as saying the word and regressing back into friendship. They'd opened a door that could never be closed properly, despite what they piled up against it to ebb the flow.

The smart thing to do would be part ways now, before it was too late, before they both got their hearts broken. But even though she believed him when he said he was willing to wait… she knew that didn't mean he was willing to leave. He'd wait for her… right by her side. And though it would be difficult to have him close, she wouldn't have it any other way. She could count the number of people she trusted in this world on one hand, so she wasn't about to give up on one just because it had become a little more complicated.

They eventually fell away from each other, and when they parted MacCready produced a pair of beers seemingly from thin air.

"Friendship means drinking a lot, right?" he said hearteningly. She smiled and nodded at him, catching an errant tear with the back of her hand before it could escape the corner of her eye. He popped the cap off of one with his knife and passed it to her. A sudden booming noise caught them both off guard, and they turned toward the window with surprise. They rushed toward it and looked outside… super mutants? Raiders?

…Rain? They watched in awe as the storm front rolled toward them, lightning forking across the sky impressively, followed only seconds later by crackling thunder. They exchanged a relieved look before MacCready popped the cap off his beer and they clinked the bottles together in a silent toast.

They leaned against the empty window frame and watched as bands of rain began to sweep across the valley beyond the bridge. It was only a few minutes before a cool wind whipped in toward them, the rain following closely on its heels. There was palpable relief throughout the settlement as people looked out their windows or stepped outside into the pouring rain, opening their arms to welcome it back wholeheartedly.

"We'll get it back to normal, Cryo," MacCready said. She nodded in agreement, but when she looked at him she got a familiar feeling… he'd be patient, but he certainly didn't intend to leave it at that.


	13. Business as Usual

As she and MacCready stood waist deep in muddy water, getting pummeled from above by a falling maelstrom and quickly becoming surrounded by roaring feral ghouls, she knew they were definitely getting back on track to normalcy. To what that word meant to the two of them, at least… which seemed to be some combination of 'bored' and 'reckless'. After all, when else do you see an enormous sinkhole that half a town fell into and think… "Oh yeah, we are _definitely_ jumping into that."?

It'd been almost a month since they'd left Sanctuary… since she'd buried her husband. She had insisted on digging the grave herself, though it took her an entire day. Neither MacCready or Preston had given her flack about overexerting herself, they knew it was something she had to do. The following day she and Preston went to retrieve the body, placing it in the rough wooden box Sturges had built for her. It took six of them to carefully lower it into the ground, and she'd dismissed them all again so she could slowly refill the grave alone.

She had avoided crying up until that point. However, she couldn't stem the tide any longer as she watched the whole settlement line up to pay their respects. They'd never known him, obviously, but he had meant something to her… so now he meant something to them. Though there was really nothing that could be considered a 'flower' anymore, they'd gathered various plants to lay on the grave, or made small trinkets out of scrap, some wrote sentiments, poems or scripture on pieces of paper. Mama Murphy had even presented her with a wooden grave marker with his named carved on it.

Though it had been monumentally difficult to go through the process of burying her spouse, it had brought more relief in the following weeks than she'd ever expected. The burial made it seem more final, more real, and it was this that allowed her to begin to accept his fate and grieve properly… not with vengeance or regret, but with affection and remembrance. She even found that the memory of the moment of his death was plaguing her less and less with each passing day, replaced instead with an ability to remember happy memories, the fun they'd had together.

After the funeral, she and MacCready had packed their bags and headed straight for Med-Tek. They cleared the ferals, recovered the hopeful cure for Duncan's condition, and packed it on the first caravan out of the Commonwealth. This long-awaited triumph was followed up by an evening of excessive celebratory drinking, followed by intoxicated super mutant sharpshooting from the top of the Diamond City ramparts. Luckily Nick caught wind of what was going on before the city guard could get the Mayor involved, and he all but drug them down by the scruff of their necks.

After being scolded both for their foolhardy evening and for her lying to him about her condition after the Glowing Sea, information she still couldn't say how he knew, they sulked to the Dugout Inn and slept off their hangovers. They took it easy around Diamond City for the next few days as she tried to make up with Nick for her deceit. The detective didn't hold the grudge for long however, and it was less than twenty-four hours before he let them help with cases again, even sneaking around town along with them and divulging some of his tricks-of-the-trade, such as the sundry ways one could get a cheating spouse to admit their adultery. She and Mac found each and every one amusing in its own way.

Nick continued to keep MacCready at a distance however, treating him with the kind of distrust a southern father with a penchant for shotguns might. There were moments when he seemed to warm to him though, and those instances grew more frequent with each passing day.

For the next few weeks they hung out around Diamond City and Goodneighbor, taking the occasional odd job but mostly helping out with Nick's backlog of cases. Eventually Nick received a job that required all his faculties and enough discretion that she and MacCready weren't allowed to help. This lead to their current state of boredom, which they'd satiated by leaping blindly into a sinkhole. So really, this was all Nick's fault.

MacCready had taken down two ferals before she'd even been able to lift her laser rifle out of the water, and one of the ghouls was plowing toward her as she realized the useless weapon was completely waterlogged. She slung the rifle behind her back as she swung a punch at the feral's face, grimacing in disgust as its rotted flesh gave way under the strike, leaving a layer of mucus coating her hand and arm. The impact slowed it however, giving her enough time to wade to the water's edge and grab a loose wooden board, swinging it into the ghoul's head with enough force to snap its neck.

She took stock of their situation, which wasn't great, swinging her new weapon to crush another ghoul's face as it ambled toward MacCready's turned back. He dispatched another with his rifle before hopping out of the water and onto the rocks, reaching back to pull her out as well. She grabbed a pistol out of a holster on his thigh, shaking the water from it quickly before firing it into the head of an approaching feral. They stood back to back as they eliminated the remaining creatures, breathing heavily as they looked around to confirm they'd all been taken care of. Nope.

A monstrous looking ghoul, glowing bright green with an abundance of radiation, came charging toward them from down the tunnel.

"Son of a…" MacCready started, then they both apparently had the same thought at the same time as they stepped away from one another, allowing the creature to amble right between them and fall into the water behind them. They turned in unison, firing an unnecessary number of times into the creature's head. They stared down at its corpse, bouncing harmlessly in the turmoiled water for a few long moments until they suddenly realized her Pip Boy was clicking.

"Mmm," she said, as if famished, "Radiation, how I missed you."

"Ok," MacCready said with a weary sigh, taking her by the arm and leading her away from the ghoul's emissions. They found a good amount of untouched loot on some corpses that had either fallen or been tossed into the sinkhole, then made their way up the tunnels that, thankfully, led back out into the town.

"I don't know, I guess I expected to find something more… mysterious. Like maybe some Illuminati secret passageways or something," she said as she pulled herself up and into the streets, reaching back down to give MacCready a hand up.

"Illuminati?" he questioned, attempting to ring some of the water out of his soaked hat.

"What do they teach you in school these days?" she asked with feigned dissatisfaction, "You know, like Freemason shit or something. Sorry… crap… er, stuff. Freemason… stuff."

MacCready did a poor job of hiding a smile as she tried to backtrack through her cursing, and she was slightly embarrassed when she felt herself blushing. Though it'd been easy to slip back into their carefree banter, she tended to feel guilty when she caught herself inadvertently flirting with him, like she was leading him on in some way. Which made no sense, as her feelings for MacCready were genuine, that much became clearer and clearer every day, but she still felt like it was unfair. Not that he ever seemed to mind.

She pulled her rifle back over her shoulder and ejected the fusion cell, watching sulkily as a shocking amount of water began to pour out of the thing and onto the ground at their feet.

"Don't worry, it'll be fine once it dries out," MacCready said.

She put on her mocking, affected tone she knew he liked so much, "Oh hey, Cryo! By the way - your laser weapon will most certainly not work after we leap into this maelstrom. Just a heads up."

He rolled his eyes but didn't have a chance to retort before they heard sudden gun fire. They ducked in unison, crouching behind a rocky outcropping to take cover, though the commotion was far enough away that they couldn't have been the intended targets. They listened for a few more moments as the popping continued, followed by unintelligible yelling and a rather significant explosion.

MacCready caught her eye and motioned toward a nearby building. She nodded and followed behind him, keeping her hand on the pistol she'd sequestered from him earlier. They made their way into the building and up the stairs to the roof. At eight stories it was the tallest structure in the immediate area.

They snuck around the low brick wall that enclosed the rooftop until they could get a good view of the the culprits a few blocks away. Super mutants versus raiders, and a lot of them. They were, of course, positioned between them and Diamond City. Though they could skirt a wide arc to avoid them, the sun was already low in the sky.

"Hey…" MacCready said suddenly, turning to give her a mischievous look, "Want to learn how to sharpshoot?"


	14. Sharpshooting 101

After their night of shooting at super mutants from the top of Diamond City a few weeks ago, MacCready had promised to show her how to properly do it someday, when they weren't so terribly drunk. Turns out, they drank an awful lot, so it had taken until now for an opportunity to present itself.

They found a position where the roof's low wall had crumbled enough that they could lay on their stomachs and have a good position to fire from between the bricks. It was here they waited for nightfall, so their position would be better concealed should either side of the raging skirmish below realize that a third party had entered the battlefield.

MacCready used that time to teach her how to take apart and put the weapon back together, how to load it, how to clean it… but how she shouldn't clean it, something about a dirty barrel… and how best to commune with it when it was being ornery. She was a little surprised he hadn't named the thing, he talked about it like it was a war buddy who had saved his life on the front lines. Which, she supposed, it kind of had.

After the sky had dimmed considerably, MacCready handed her the weapon, "Alright. Have a look."

She took the rifle to look through the scope and was immediately surprised by the clarity. Though a certain murk had come with the dusk, the fires that burnt from prior mine and grenade detonations along with a starry sky provided just enough light to see clearly. The vision through the scope was so close she found it somewhat disorienting, constantly raising her look to try and judge the space with her eyes, then lowering it back down to see how it correlated. It reminded her of what it was like looking through telescopes with her father when she was a child.

"So, on your stomach is the best position - we can talk about how to shoot from crouching or standing later," he explained. "Here we can use these bricks but elsewhere you might need to find something else to stabilize with. You can always use your arm but it'll reduce your accuracy quite a bit. Here, don't hunch," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder to get her to lower it. "Keep the rifle tight to your shoulder, just above your armpit. Make sure to not to rest it too far in on your collar bone, get the meat of the muscle with it."

He put his arm over her shoulder to adjust the gun's position, then laid his hand over hers to slide it back a bit into the proper spot. He lowered his face next to hers to show her how to keep her head and neck in line with the scope and her cheek pressed against the stock. She realized she was holding her breath… and blushing.

Was he kidding with this? There had been a cliche in her time - or a series of them rather… a guy wants to show you 'proper bowling form' or 'how to hold a billiards cue' or 'how to swing a tennis racket' as an excuse to get close to you. Was 'how to shoot a sniper rifle' the modern day equivalent?

His demeanor didn't shift however, so she could only assume he was being serious. He wanted her to know how to use it, and she wanted to know… she had to stop looking farther into it than that.

"Now, your breath is a matter of preference," he continued, "I like to pull on the down breath, but you should experiment and see what works best for you."

"Between heartbeats?" she clarified. Her heart was racing too fast at the moment to pretend there'd be time to fire a weapon between beats. She was relieved when he released his grip on her, settling back down on his stomach next to her.

"Right, it's difficult to distinguish at first but you'll get used to it with practice. You'll find what works best for you, how many breaths, how long to wait, whether you're better at pulling quickly or taking your time."

"What do you do?" she asked, trying to give herself time to slow her breath and steady her heart.

"Depends how urgent the situation is," he said with a smile, "But in a perfect scenario, I take three breaths, hold the last out, squeeze on the pause. Trigger should be steady and slow… pull and release in one fluid motion."

She took a few deep breaths, her heart beginning to slow to a more normal pace. She summarized his instructions in her head and began to repeat them to herself to assign them to memory. Prone position, toes firmly planted, tight to your shoulder, cheek fixed against stock, both eyes open, remember to breathe, wait for the downbeat, slow fluid pull.

"Depending on your distance, you have to think about wind as well," he continued. "But what matters is what's happening about two-thirds to three-quarters of the way to your target, as the bullet slows. They're nice and sandwiched between those buildings down there, so this light cross wind is going to be too negligible to have an impact."

She nodded and sighed… she hadn't felt any wind at all. There was a lot more to this than she thought, and she was certain he wasn't even getting into the true nitty-gritty of it.

"Alright, Cryo, that's all I got," he said, giving her an encouraging smile, "Safety off."


	15. Killshot

She looked down on the scene below and picked her target. Mutants first, she decided, as she had a slightly better angle on that side of the fight. Keeping both eyes open, she looked through the scope and centered it on her target. She flipped the safety with her thumb, following along with the mutant's motions as he ducked in and out of cover. She ran through the list in her head again, then pulled the trigger. Coming in just slightly off of her intended target, the bullet hit the right side of the mutant's head, sending it sprawling to the ground, dead on impact.

"Da- … I mean, nice. Good shot," he said, seeming genuinely impressed and slightly bewildered. She proved it was a fluke however as her next few shots went completely AWOL, missing their marks significantly.

"You got it," he said quietly, "Take your time."

She took a deep breath, shortening her list and using it to center herself. Planted toes, tight to shoulder, cheek fixed, eyes open, breathe… breathe… downbeat, fluid pull.

Another went sprawling across the pavement. A nearby mutant looked around in confusion, surprised by his comrade's sudden death, but he did not look toward them.

"You're a natural, I swear," MacCready said with a smile.

"Two out of five does not make one a natural," she replied, leaning on one elbow to reload the weapon.

"I'd bet against that, but it'd be pretty easy for you to throw the game," he said.

"You think I'd miss on purpose?" she asked.

"To prove me wrong? Yes."

She shook her head. _Now_ she was going to prove him wrong… well, to prove him wrong that she wouldn't prove him wrong. Whatever.

Planted, tight, fixed, eyes, breathe… breathe… downbeat, pull. Dead mutant.  
Planted, tight, fixed, eyes, breathe… breathe… downbeat, pull. Dead mutant hound.  
Planted, tight, fixed, eyes, breathe… breathe… downbeat, pull. Dead raider.

"It's two breaths, for the record," she said with what she knew was a smug grin.

"See?" he said with a genuine smile. She realized then he had antagonized her on purpose, so she glared at him.

"You aren't even going to need my help with this courser," he added. She knew he meant it as a compliment, so at first she was confused by her own reaction. She felt… alarmed. He had to be there, she needed him. All the times she'd run the scenario through in her head of how it might all go down, a hundred different ways, every last one of them included him by her side.

"No," she said her smile fading, "I do… I need you there."

"You _want_ me there," he said, then added, "You're stronger than you give yourself credit for sometimes."

"Sometimes…" she said, "Other times, I half kill myself with radiation poisoning."

"Half is being generous," he said, "I'd say you were… seventy-five to eighty percent."

"Dead?" she asked.

"Dead," he clarified.

"See? At my current rate of self-destruction, I'm bound to get myself killed next time around."

He smiled and shook his head, looking back down toward the battle, then under his breath he said, "Like I'd ever not be there."

She continued to look at him as the light from gunfire and explosions danced across his face. He was doing it again… saying all the right words, doing all the right things, caring when he should… but not smothering her with it. He was funny when she needed cheering up, permissive when she was feeling sarcastic or playful, serious when she needed comfort, and endlessly patient. Was he doing it on purpose? Had he worked all this time at figuring out the things that would make him irresistible to her… or was he just like that?

She knew she was staring, so she wasn't surprised when he seemed to sense her gaze and finally turned back to see why she was gaping at him, even though she didn't know herself. He gave her that look… that expectant yet curious yet pleased yet carefree look… like despite how stupid of an idea she was about to come up with, he was ready to roll with it. He didn't have time to vocalize the obvious inquiry that he'd developed in response, however, because she'd flicked the safety back on and grabbed him by the collar and pulled him into a kiss.

Instead of seeming surprised, or even cautious, he took it in stride, just like everything else. He put his weight on one arm so he could wrap the other around her waist, pulling her closer to him and away from the rifle, which slid down off its perch onto the roof behind her. She rested her own free hand on his jaw, gentle at first but then firmer as she pulled him into her, needing his lips to stay on hers, needing to be closer to him.

After languishing in the initial rush the contact caused, she found her mind racing… had it been long enough? Who determined what was 'long enough' anyway? Why did it matter what anyone else thought or wanted, especially in this world where ideas of society and civility seemed so dissociated from everyday life?

If they spent every second together, and they couldn't stand to be apart, and they both wanted it, and they were both thinking about it, and they couldn't take their eyes off one another, and they couldn't take their minds off one another, but… they just never touched… did that somehow make a difference? Who freaking cared?

Suddenly the air around them changed and they both froze. They hadn't heard anything… but, they had been distracted. Maybe they'd missed it? They were no longer alone.


	16. Speechless

The one good thing about super mutants was that they were certainly not stealthy. So as one roared "Filthy humans!" at them, it gave them enough time to grab their weapons and find cover before it started emptying the contents of its minigun at them. Shards of concrete and brick exploded off in every direction as the bullets sprayed the wall they ducked behind as they narrowly missed the onslaught.

MacCready peeked around the corner toward the entrance to the roof where the gunfire had originated. He held up two fingers to indicate the number of assailants he spotted. She wished then she'd grabbed her laser rifle instead of the pistol she'd borrowed from him. She imagined shooting it at a super mutant would be akin to flicking pebbles at a stone wall.

She watched as MacCready looked out from cover again, then almost yelped in surprise as an enormous green hand appeared from the other side of her, grabbing her by the neck. It pulled her up and out of cover, holding her off her feet in front of it. She heard MacCready's rifle going off but it didn't seem aimed in her direction.

She held onto its huge hand with both of hers, unable to stop herself from kicking and struggling even though she knew it was doing her no good. She gasped for breath as the thing cocked its head and looked into her face with its gruesome bloodshot eyes and rotted, stinking breath. It inhaled as if about to roar at her when its head suddenly snapped back, releasing its grip on her as it fell to the ground, dead. The wind was knocked out of her as she landed hard on her back.

MacCready was hovering over her seconds later, telling her to stay still in case she'd hurt her spine. Her vision faltered from the lack of oxygen, so she involuntarily heeded his advice as she attempted to not pass out. She didn't see where he went, but heard more shots being fired, then the familiar launch sequence of the minigun as it began to warm up again. She finally found her breath, though it caused lances of pain through her throat and into her chest as she sucked in the air. Her back felt fine however, so she turned over and reached out toward her pistol, crawling closer into cover behind the wall.

The remaining mutant was cheerily distracted, laughing brutishly while sweeping its minigun back and forth in MacCready's direction, or at least where she surmised he must have run off to. A couple well-placed bullets would do the trick…

She fired her pistol into the shoulder of the mutant, right where the gun's strap crossed behind its back. The strap snapped as it frayed, the unexpected weight forcing the gun to cease its onslaught and fall from the mutant's grasp as it looked down in confusion. It turned in her direction, a distraction that lasted just long enough for MacCready to fire a shot into its temple.

They both stayed quiet for a few long moments to confirm that the mutants had no additional friends, then stood and turned toward one another anxiously. She was reminded of the trauma she'd endured when she tried to turn her neck toward him as he walked toward her.

"Damn," she said breathily, her voice crackling and her throat burning, "Sorry… ugh. Shit, what do you say instead of damn?" She sighed, "Whatever."

He touched her neck lightly and she recoiled from the lance of pain it caused, and the reflex caused even more pain. She could feel the blood trying to rush through her crushed arteries, pooling, swelling, bruising… and it was giving her a harsh headache.

"Do you think it's broken?" he asked.

"I don't know," she croaked. She could feel her voice slipping away with every word. MacCready dug through his bag for a stimpack, then looked up at her.

"This is going to hurt," he said warily. She nodded, and he quickly but carefully stabbed it into the side of her neck. Though the injection point itself burned with pure agony, she felt immediate relief from the pain in her neck and head, though the pressure and fullness remained.

"It's still going to swell and bruise, but you should be fine," he said distantly, continuing to stare at her neck cautiously. "Sorry, Cryo," he said, as if it was somehow his fault. She opened her mouth to refute his implication, but nothing came out. Literally, nothing. She couldn't even force out enough of a semblance of speech to tell Mac she couldn't talk.

"Sh- … You lost your voice?" he asked. Afraid to nod, she gave a nervous grimace as a response, hoping he understood.

"Ok… might just be a side effect, but let's see Doc Sun about it in the morning," he said. She gave a sweeping look around, careful not to move her neck too much.

"Yeah, we're exposed. Let's find somewhere inside to hole up for the night."

At least he seemed to be able to read her mind, that made not being able to speak a little easier. They grabbed their bags and guns and headed down a couple floors into the building, eventually finding a large closet under a stairway in a corner that seemed relatively safe. While MacCready hunted down a few blankets to create a makeshift bedroll, she found a lantern to light and got out some dried meat and purified water for a makeshift dinner.

He piled and unpiled the blankets a few times before looking at her sheepishly. She gave him a thumbs up, did he think her so hard to please? He was always the one that insisted they stay at the Dugout, she'd just as soon crash on Nick's couch.

They sat down on the blankets with their backs against the wall, shoulder to shoulder, chewing on their meals. She ended up eating and drinking very little, as with each swallow came an increase in pain, and though her stomach yearned for the sustenance, it quickly became not worth it.

MacCready insisted on applying another stimpack, which did relieve the pain some. He offered to try and wrap it for her, to help give it some support but she shook her head, then sighed as the action brought with it more throbbing pain.

He spent the next few minutes explaining the sign language hand motions for yes and no to her. She wanted to ask how he knew that, which she tried to relay with an inquisitive shrug, which also caused burning pain. She rolled her eyes at herself and he sighed heavily, looking at her with pained sympathy. She did nothing else, just carefully lowered herself down onto the blankets… clearly the only safe thing she could was lie down.

She laid down on her side as MacCready helped pile the blankets to support her neck, confirming that she seemed comfortable before laying down himself. Though there was plenty of room to lay separate, he'd drawn up directly behind her, laying an arm across her waist to hold her close to him. Then she felt a wave of electricity run through her as he kissed the back of her neck, just once, in the most delicate, sincere, perfect way.

"I'll take first watch," he said quietly, then added, "I know, I know… I won't fall asleep this time."


	17. Wonderful Guy

_I'm not speaking to you_ , she'd written.

 _I'm keenly aware of that,_ was MacCready's reply. Though they were only written words, she could easily imagine the snarky way in which he would have said them. She glared at him.

They were sitting across the room from one another on their respective beds in the Dugout Inn, leaning against their opposing walls and tossing a note back and forth, an activity that had become commonplace over the last week as her vocal chords continued to recover. She pretended like she was writing something, then tossed the note back at him. He opened it and leveled a flat look at her.

"Ha - ha - ha," he said affectedly. She raised a stern finger to her mouth to shush him. He knew the rules. He sighed and shook his head, looking back down to scribble something else on the note. He folded it up and tossed it back at her.

 _I'm sorry I keep speaking to others on your behalf, but it's really funny._ She gave him another glare, then continued reading. _Come on, look how sweet and innocent I am_. She looked back up to find his eyes big, his lower lip stuck out. She couldn't help but laugh. She crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it at his face. He let it bounce off and just smiled wholesomely back at her. Though MacCready had been mostly pleasant and accommodating during her recovery, he had also taken the opportunity to be a big, fat jerk.

It ranged in severity from telling the staff at the Dugout she would no longer be drinking because she'd become a devout Christian who had also taken a vow of silence, to telling Ellie and Nick that she and Preston had eloped and would be heading west to start over somewhere new and she just couldn't bring herself to tell them. He'd even been able to convincingly feign shedding a tear when he mentioned they'd be taking Dogmeat.

Turns out, not many people in the Commonwealth know sign language, and would take her constant finger pinching "No!" motion to mean she wanted something from them or that she felt MacCready was being long winded with his explanation, which was doubly infuriating. So, she'd had to start resorting to violence to stop him, and she'd shoved him hard enough after that one that Nick got the hint pretty quickly. She was sure by the look on the detective's face, though, that it would have given him a heart attack if he had one to seize. She was equal parts alarmed and impressed by the compelling way Mac was able to spin the tales, and he usually only broke down into laughter after she started hitting him to get him to shut up.

They'd kept up on what MacCready had begun to refer to as "courser training", heading out every day into the city to find a new place to hone her sharpshooting skills. Their evenings were spent safely in the confines of the walls, having dinner with Piper, lounging around with Nick and Ellie, or drinking at the Dugout. They'd even spent some calm evenings holed up in their room at the inn, folding up notes and passing them back and forth like school children. If they continued to prove anything, it was that they were good at acting like kids.

They'd agreed via their letters and MacCready's ability to discern meaning from even her smallest looks and gestures that they'd continue to take things slow between them. He'd said he wanted to talk about it more once her voice was back, that it wasn't something he felt would be best conveyed in writing. This had made her a bit nervous… maybe he was having second thoughts? But he continued to be as charming as ever, treating her like a queen other than the times when he was giving her hell. And though they'd stayed separate for a few nights while her neck healed, it wasn't long before he'd taken to abandoning his own bed in favor of lying next to her while they slept.

She knew Mac would never agree to head to the CIT ruins until she could speak, so she spent a lot of time trying to force the damn things to work. She knew what Doctor Sun had said, "They'll work when they're ready to work," but that vague of a timeline just wasn't going to cut it. She'd spent long enough healing from the Glowing Sea, then honing her skills so she could have a chance against the courser. She was ready to go, with or without her vocal chords. Despite how much she tried to force them though, it appeared they just weren't going to be bossed around.

That evening they took their note passing game out into the bar of the Dugout, turning it into a drinking game. If she could write down something from the past that he'd never heard of, or couldn't accurately explain, he had to drink. If he could write down something from present day that she didn't know about, she had to drink. Five consecutive drinks resulted in a shot.

By the end she had beaten him handily, though the game wasn't precisely fair to start with. Though she'd done quite a bit of drinking and learned a few things about this world she hadn't known, it seemed that a surprising portion of human history had been lost to time, at least to the general population's knowledge. She knew it was time to end it when instead of passing back a response, he'd written… _Do you like me? Circle one… Yes, No, Maybe._

Of all the things to not get lost to the ages, she felt a little proud of her species for holding on to that one. Adorable. She kissed him in response, which surprised him quite a bit, as they'd yet to go public with their affections. No one seemed particularly surprised however, Vadim even whistled and clapped in approval.

When she woke the following morning, however, Mac wasn't in their room. His duster was piled next to his bed, his armor was stacked on the dresser… his rifle was leaning against the wall?

"Mac!" she called out, grabbing her gun and running toward the doorway. When she opened it he was standing just outside looking surprised, holding two steaming plates of grilled meat. He'd left in only his pants and a shirt, his suspenders hanging down against his legs and his hair rumpled endearingly from sleep. He must have rolled straight out of bed and gone to get them breakfast.

"Sorry," she said, "You were just… gone, I thought something was wrong."

"Cryo!" he exclaimed with shock she didn't comprehend. He set the food down and looked at her expectantly until she realized why he was reacting that way.

"Holy shi- … gah," she said in frustration, then added with excitement, "I can talk!"

"You can talk!" he agreed with matched excitement.

"We should go, today, now," she said, her voice still rough and cracking.

"Now? I'm still hung over," he said apprehensively.

"Yeah… that's kind of my fault I guess," she relented, "We have some prep work to do anyways. We can head out this afternoon."

"I know you like getting stuck out there at night anyways," he said with a grin, "Keeps us sharp."

She picked up her plate and sat down on her bed, MacCready flicking on the radio before sitting down next to her with his own breakfast. It was the end of a song… the slower one about the woman moving mountains and going through fire and just generally being crazy because she loved her man so much.

The song ended and Travis's voice crackled next, "And on that note, we've got good news from the Dugout Inn. It seems our favorite vault dweller and former mercenary have finally admitted their feelings for one another."

She almost spit her food out in shock and MacCready burst out laughing.

"This next one goes out to them," Travis added, then played the even more obnoxious one about Kansas and the Fourth of July and the poor woman who was simply falling apart because of her love for some man. She vaguely remembered it being from a musical, but couldn't remember which one.

Mac looked a little afraid but turned and smiled at her anyway, as if she might want to join in the singing so she could adequately express her feelings for how gloriously wonderful he was. She leveled a glare at him, fiercely enough that he forced his smile to fade for his own safety.

" _Former_ mercenary?" he said between bites, "I never really thought it'd become past tense."

"Well, a merc's a gun for hire," she explained, "But, I've claimed you."

He returned her mischievous look with a wolfish grin, but if he intended to act on it she didn't give him the chance as she finished up her breakfast and swung her legs off the side of the bed to stand up.

"We have to make one additional stop on our way out of town," she said, "So I can kill Travis."


	18. Hostage

They made a point of being uncharacteristically cautious over the next ten or so hours. They prepped their gear, went to the CIT ruins, found and followed a courser's signal, and eliminated the majority of a troop of mercenaries on their way up to the top floor of Greenetech Genetics, where a courser was apparently giving the gunners some trouble.

They found two vantage points where they could get a decent view of the synth as he went about his business, threatening and yelling at the gunners in the other room. Neither spot was ideal, one far away and down two floors, looking up through the open atrium. The other was closer and on the same level, but the only view was through a small slat in the wall no wider than three inches. They'd split up, she'd taken the farther spot and he the closer. Whoever got the first clean shot would take it.

So when she looked through the scope to get the courser in her sights and instead saw the back of MacCready's head… she was, to say the least, alarmed. The courser had him by the back of his shirt with one hand, holding a laser pistol in the other, and was walking slowly along the railing perpendicular to her.

"I'm alone, I swear, " MacCready said fiercely. The synth reacted by kicking the back of his knees, forcing him to fall forward onto them. He kept his grip on his collar, shaking him threateningly as Mac raised his hands in resignation.

"Not to be rude, but you were hardly being stealthy. There's no way you got up here on your own," the courser growled. "Come out, come out, wherever you are," he taunted, then turned the gun toward MacCready's temple.

She knew what Mac would want her to do - to take the shot anyways. There was no downbeat though, no space between heartbeats when someone extremely dangerous was holding a gun to the head of someone you cared about.

So she left her hiding spot and made her way upstairs to the door that led into the vestibule. She slung the sniper rifle across her back along with her laser rifle, then took out her pistol. She pressed the button to let the doors slide open in front of her, standing as casually as she could manage. She kept her gun in hand, but didn't raise it to threaten the courser. He held the power so long as his finger was on that trigger.

She held her free hand up to indicate her willingness to surrender. The courser looked at her analytically, but didn't seem like he was about to make any rash judgements. He mostly seemed terribly annoyed.

"Your bosses want me alive, trust me," she said, her voice still gravelly from disuse. She imagined it gave her a certain rough quality she was hoping would assist with the coming negotiation.

"I have no idea who you are, lady," he said gruffly.

"I'm Shaun's mother," she said, then held her breath as she hoped that it meant something to him. He was very stoic for a long time, but eventually his lips loosened into the smallest smile.

"Ok," he said very plainly. She wasn't sure how to take that. "Not sure what your friend has to do with all this, though," he said threateningly, shoving MacCready roughly but not taking his eyes from her.

"Nothing, I think that's the point," she said, "You can let him go, he has nothing to do with this."

"With _what_?" the courser asked, "There's a thousand places in this city you could go pick a fight that you can't win - why are you bothering _me_ with it?"

"Just let him go, and we can talk all about it," she said. The courser glared at her, shoving MacCready again and pressing the tip of the gun into his temple.

"Give me one good reason," he said harshly. Fair enough. She summoned the remainder of her courage, not because of what she had to do, but because she knew it was going to hurt Mac. She very slowly turned her pistol toward her own head.

Surprisingly… the courser wavered. He set his jaw and stared at her steadily, but she could sense the trepidation in his eyes.

"I have a very specific mission, and that doesn't have anything to do with you," he said carefully.

She pulled the hammer back on the gun.

MacCready was frozen now, staring at her, but she didn't dare drop her gaze to him. She could imagine the look anyways, and she knew she couldn't bare to see it. She stared hard into the courser's eyes and didn't flinch, didn't even blink. He looked back at her for a few long moments, then sighed with annoyance, like she was trying his patience.

"You need me, your hesitation proves as much," she said. "And though I doubt you know the reason why, I'm guessing you're not keen on having to hear from your superiors about it later. I have something I can take from you… I can even the score. If I need to."

"Killing yourself, what's the point?" the synth asked slowly.

"You think I won't do it?" she said quietly, impressed by the apathetic danger in her own voice. "You people have taken everything from me… if you take him too, you'll literally be giving me _nothing_ to lose."

The courser continued to stare at her for a few long moments. She wasn't sure if he really believed she was capable of it, or simply couldn't afford to take the chance, but eventually he lowered his weapon. He shoved MacCready away from him, sending him sprawling to the ground between them.

"If you know who I am, then you know you should just walk away. You seem sensible… if not a bit reckless," he grumbled. She reached down to help MacCready stand… and was very… very… _careful_.

She kept her gaze locked on the synth… she couldn't look at Mac, lest she lose her resolve. She would need it all for what she was about to do.

She turned to follow MacCready out, trailing him a few steps. As he crossed the threshold of the doorway she shoved him forward into the room, not enough for him to fall, but enough that he stumbled in confusion. This gave her enough time to hit the button to shut the door between them, then flip the switch to lock it shut. She heard the courser laughing as she slowly turned around, MacCready's yelling and banging muffled through the door behind her.

"Ok, lady," the courser said with a grin, "If you insist."


	19. The Lady Insists

She gave the courser a devious, sideways smile then turned toward the wall and tucked herself into a ball a fraction of a second before the explosion went off. She had her eyes shut and her ears plugged in time, so despite being only a few yards away, she had maintained enough of her faculties to run toward cover while firing her pistol through the wall of smoke.

She slid behind a stack of heavy metal crates to take cover. She could only assume that despite being off guard, the grenade hadn't been enough to kill the courser outright. She was impressed she'd been stealthy enough to drop the thing right at his feet without him noticing… and lucky Mac hadn't seen her do it as she helped him up off the ground; she didn't think he'd have played along if he realized what she was up to.

She leaned out from cover long enough to look for evidence of where the courser may have gone… footprints, a trail of blood, anything. Did coursers even bleed? She saw nothing. She felt a wave of panic as she realized exactly what she'd just done. She knew next to nothing about her opponent and she'd just locked herself in a room with him and blew up a grenade in his face.

Then she saw it… a shadow? A trick of the light? She rolled away and around to the other side of her cover just in time as the courser opened fire on where she'd been a half second before. She cursed to herself as she realized he was in stealth… not the 'light on his feet' kind, but true stealth… fancy, expensive, consummate stealth.

She had to get around it somehow, she'd never be able to beat him if she couldn't see him. She had an idea, quickly looking around and see if she could find what she needed. Was that… a protectron?

She grabbed two grenades from her pouch and pulled the pins, tossing one in the direction she'd last seen the courser and the other halfway between that and her intended destination. She waited just long enough to hear the explosions begin to go off, then ducked out of cover and ran.

She slid into the computer like she was sliding into home plate. She was going to have to do this fast. She typed as quickly as she could, but the dust had almost settled before she finally cracked it, the menu loading with agonizing leisure. The next sequence she could do blindfolded, she'd done it so many times.

Protectron… personality… fire brigadier… activate…

The courser's laser struck her elbow just as she hit the enter key and dashed away. She found refuge behind a different stack of crates, ignoring her burning arm as she began to dig through her pack, the synth's relentless firing spraying the wall behind her as she searched. She knew she had one left, she hoped, she had to…

She heard the familiar beeps of the protectron's boot sequence as its casing slid open and it stepped out into the room. She found it just in time… an incendiary grenade. She pulled the pin and peeked out of cover, carefully rolling it toward a pile of debris that sat between her and the robot. She ducked back behind the crates just as the courser opened fire on her again, and she took cover as the explosion rocked her. She looked out slowly and sighed with relief as she realized it had the intended effect - the debris had erupted into flame… and she hadn't accidentally taken the protectron out in the process.

"Fire. Detected," the protectron croaked, "Initiating. Cryogenic. Countermeasures."

It only took a few seconds for the robot to start spraying the entire room with cryogenic foam, continuing even after it had successfully smothered the flames. She took a deep breath. Now or never.

She sprung up from cover and found her target, the courser covered in foam a few yards away and looking beyond aggravated. She unloaded her laser rifle into him as he wiped the freezing foam from his face and ducked to find cover himself, limping heavily. He was limping! She felt a surge of victory that almost killing herself with a grenade hadn't gone entirely to waste. She knelt back down to reload.

At least a few of those shots had struck his chest and arms. Between that and the first grenade, he had to be injured quite badly by this point. Though, she supposed, he didn't _have_ to be. He could have been made of pure steel, or titanium, or chromium, or whatever the hardest metal was that she couldn't remember right now. Or diamond! She had no idea. She could only hope that he wasn't immortal. At least now, she could see him.

She hopped up and slid across her the top of the crates towards the courser. She could barely see the top of his head as he crouched - he'd released his now useless stealth guise and was still hiding behind the same cover he'd slipped into. She unloaded her weapon at him as she rushed toward a smaller stand of crates that was between them, sliding into cover just as the protectron began to douse the area again in more cold foam.

She felt a strange, misplaced surge of cheer as the scene around her reminded her of Christmas… then she sighed at herself. Had she lost her mind? The courser raised himself up to start firing back at her, a beam grazing her shoulder as she tucked down farther behind the crates. After a few moments she could no longer hear the sharp pang of the lasers firing… he finally needed to reload.

One last grenade. She pulled the pin and waited, just long enough that he wouldn't have time to throw it back at her. She tossed it over her cover and right into his, forcing him to retreat to the other side of the room before the explosion. He crossed by his gunner hostages who sat tied up, gaping openly at them, covered in fire retardant foam. She shot at the courser as he fled, gaining a strike to his flank before he slid through the foam and behind a set of old filing cabinets.

He couldn't possibly be able to take much more. Suddenly, she heard a different kind of gun fire, the heavier, meatier sound of ballistics. A few seconds later, she turned to watch as the courser fell, scrambling, out of his cover. He was not quite dead, deactivated, whatever… but he was close. She took advantage of his prone position, rushing toward him and firing what remained of her fusion cell into his chest until he finally stopped twitching. He did bleed… he had muscle and tissue and scars…

She looked around to see where the other gunfire had come from. She found the source standing down two floors through the atrium near her original sniping spot, holding his rifle and staring up at her. MacCready… did not… seem… pleased.


	20. A Change of Pronouns

"Are you insane?" he growled, storming through the door toward her as she unlocked it and it slid open.

"Clearly," she said with open incredulity at herself.

"This isn't funny, you could have been killed!" he said, his face lined with panic.

"I'm not laughing, Mac," she said seriously, "I know that, what would you have me do?"

"Why did you lock me out? I could have helped you!"

"I was about to blow up a grenade in his face - I had no way to tell you that without giving myself away."

"Then shut me out, but don't lock the door!"

"I was trying to protect you!"

"We protect _each other_!" he said fiercely, and her heart sunk when she felt the hurt in his voice, the betrayal. She was silent for a few long moments as she realized the degree to which she'd screwed up. Her motivations were honest, she'd wanted to keep him safe, but in the act she hadn't allowed him to do the same for her. He added, quietly, "That's the deal, right?"

"That's the deal," she agreed, "You're right, I'm sorry. My instincts took over, I never planned to lock you out, I swear."

He took her by the back of the neck, kissing her forehead fiercely then hugging her to his chest. She held him close as well, relieved that despite his anger with her, he still seemed concerned with demonstrating his affection. She grimaced as the protectron waddled toward them and began to spin, shooting its foam out around itself and onto them. MacCready continued to hold her with one arm, raising his pistol with the other to shoot the stupid thing in the head.

"Protectron. Deacccttiiivvaaaa…" it said as it fell to a heap on the ground.

"Are you ok?" he asked, taking her face in his hands to look her in the eye. As the adrenaline in her system receded she was starting to feel her injuries, there were more wounds than she could recall receiving, but none felt dire.

"I needed that chip, I had to kill him," she said quietly, laying her head back down on his chest.

"I know that. Did you think just because I got myself caught, we were really just going to walk away?"

"No, but… everything changed when I saw him put that gun to your head. Seeing you vulnerable like that, because of me, because of the situation I put you in?"

"I'm having a little trouble with all the pronouns," he said, stepping away a bit to look her in the eye, smoothing her hair out of her face. " _You_ need the chip, _you_ need to kill him, the situation _you_ put me in? Have I not mentioned that I'm all in?"

"That doesn't mean I want to put you in danger," she said.

"I chose to follow you, I choose to put myself in danger, you aren't forcing me to do anything… I know what you have to do, and I want to be there to help you. But this won't work if protecting each other means sequestering each other. It _will_ work if we… just keep walking through the fire together."

"You're right," she said seriously, then added, "If I ever lay an active grenade at your feet again, I'll definitely make sure we're _both_ locked in with it."

"I'm holding you to that," he said with a smile.

The gunner hostages were somehow still alive and the commander grumbled and called them _'adorable'_ so she kicked him in the junk as she passed by to dig the chip out of the courser. Meanwhile, Mac got yelled at by the synth the gunners had locked up, the one the courser had been after. She refused to give them a straight answer to anything, but they eventually decided to just let her go free. An enemy of my enemy, and all that.

The sun was minutes from rising, so they felt safe enough to walk the mile or so back to Diamond City. A haze had settled low in the streets as they left Greenetech and headed toward the river, and the city was strangely silent. The familiar pops of gunfire and explosions had become background noise to her, so she found it strange to just hear… nothing, for once. The lull reminded her of what the city was like before all this. Cleaner streets, sure, less threat of someone springing up and shooting you in the face, but this settled silence was the same… a break when even the night owls had already gone to bed, but just before the early risers had stirred. It wouldn't be long before everyone would be up and at it again, though it was slightly different these days. Morning coffee was now loading your pack with ammo, deciding what to have for breakfast was now deciding what loot could get left behind, and going to work was now going to war.

"How could you threaten your life like that?" MacCready asked, breaking into her thoughts. They continued walking but she turned to try and gauge his expression. It wasn't angry or sad… just despondent. "And the gun to your head thing? Were you trying to kill me, so that he wouldn't have to?"

"I didn't want to hurt you, Mac," she said sincerely. "At least we know that I matter to them… for some reason. Maybe we aren't in as much danger as we thought."

"I'm not sure their actions thus far have indicated that they're overly concerned about your welfare," he said. "They left you alone in the only functioning cryogenic chamber in an opened vault for over ten years… Kellogg clearly had free reign to kill you, and that courser didn't appear to be designed with any kind of failsafe."

"You saw how he reacted, though," she said. "He was afraid of the repercussions."

"To be fair, you committed to that… pretty believably," he said, and she could tell that recalling it disturbed him. She had been surprised at how easy it was to devote to what had started as a front. She honestly didn't know what she would have done if she'd gotten MacCready killed, and she didn't want to think about how close they'd been to that reality.

"I didn't mean to scare you," she said, "But in truth, I wasn't really in control… it was auto-pilot. I'd have done whatever I had to do."

They were silent for a long time as they crossed the river, the sun rising just enough that it began to create long, dark shadows across the streets.

"You know, Cryo… you remind me of someone I knew as a kid," he said.

She tried not to look too surprised as she turned to look at him. MacCready had told her some things about his past, and she'd been able to piece together what she guessed was a pretty accurate picture using the tidbits he'd provided, but he rarely talked about his childhood, and certainly never had when sober. He'd put his informative look on… one she'd only seen a handful of times, but she recognized it all the same. MacCready was about to drop some wisdom.


	21. The Wanderer

"I never had anyone to look up to, back then," MacCready said as they finished crossing the bridge and continued toward Diamond City. "And certainly no reason to trust adults. I did meet one woman… young, in retrospect, but when you're a kid, there's just… kids or adults. She wasn't like the other mungos, though." She raised an eyebrow at his strange term, but let him continue. "She had her own goals but she wasn't just in it for herself, she actually cared. I was a jerk to her, but… I was jerk to everyone back then. Acting tough was all I could really do to protect them. Anyways - when I think about how I want to change, to be a better person for Duncan, it's her I hold as an example. It's the only one I've got, but it's not a bad one."

She gave him a small smile, but one that didn't begin to fully express how she felt. He was opening up to her in a way he hadn't before, and she wanted to encourage it, but let him do it at his own pace. Though the front he put up to others was one of casual indifference, she'd spent enough time with him to know there was a lot more going on in there than he let on.

"What was she like?" she asked.

"She was… charming, but strong. Smart, but knew when to rely on others. And she was resolute in her mission… but would always help those who needed it. And, pretty badas- … uh, tough. Formidable. She was a lot like you." Though his words seemed like compliments, his tone was beginning to betray them. "But… she had learned to temper herself, to pace herself, how to be careful. She knew how to survive long enough to finish her mission. You have to stop taking stupid risks, or… you'll die before you have a chance to finish yours."

"I don't get it, Mac, you're always right there beside me jumping headlong into danger," she said.

"I know - I'm being a hypocrite. Part of it is me being stupid right along with you… but it's also me not wanting you to leap into it alone. I guess it's really advice for the both of us. Things are changing… I think we have to adjust with it."

"Changing how?" she asked.

"Duncan has a chance now…" he said, his expression a curious mix of pain and hope. "He could make a full recovery, and I have to be there for him, I have to keep providing for him. And now with you in my life… I can't lose someone I care about again. I know there are things we have to do that are dangerous, things that give us purpose. We need caps, salvage… we have to clear settlements, help others get on their feet, do what we can to stop the Commonwealth from spiraling out of control, do what we need to do to find Shaun. And I'm willing to fight for it, I have to be, but we need to be more careful. We can't keep risking our lives doing stupid things, or in the end… neither of us will be able to be there for our sons."

She nodded slowly as his words sank in. She thought she was being reckless _for_ Shaun, heroic even, willing to do anything to save him. But maybe that wasn't what this was after all. The world had ripped her husband from her and then it took her son away, and she was trying to prove to it that she wasn't willing to go down without a fight. But what kind of example was that setting for Shaun? She wouldn't be able to continue to act that way after they were reunited. She wouldn't want him to see her that way, or worse, for him to start to act that way himself. Risks in this world were inevitabilities, but to disregard her own well being, her own life… it wasn't something she could keep doing.

"Your friend… did she complete her mission?" she asked.

He looked a little shaken by the question, but eventually nodded, "Only just… but yes."

"And… it worked for her, being careful? It wasn't just luck?" she asked.

He shook his head slowly, "I don't know the whole story, but… I don't think much about what she endured could be considered lucky, no. I'm not saying we have to hole up in Sanctuary and avoid all danger - that's not even possible. But, maybe we think twice before rushing in?"

"I think you're right," she agreed, "It could be as simple as asking ourselves, _What would Nick say?_ "

He smiled then nodded, "Or, _How totally infuriated would Nick be right now?_ "

" _How long would Nick give us the silent treatment after rescuing us from this mess?_ " she suggested.

"That'd probably be a good strategy," he laughed, then was surprised as she turned and kissed him.

"I'm not complaining," he said when they came back up for breath, "But what's that for?"

"Thank you for sharing that me that. I like knowing more about where you came from," she said, and he gave her a sheepish smile that almost seemed like a blush, though his cheeks didn't color. She turned to keep walking but stopped as he grabbed her hand, entwining his fingers in hers. She smiled hearteningly and he returned it with a contented nod, then they turned to walk hand-in-hand the rest of the way back to Diamond City.


	22. Parenting 101

They returned to their room at the Dugout, which despite their varied schedule was always available and ready for them. She was fairly certain Vadim just kept it on hold in case they decided to return. She dispensed a couple stimpacks into herself, then Mac wrapped the worst of the wounds on her arms and flank with gauze. They laid down on their respective beds and stared up the ceiling, both too hyped up to actually sleep.

"You said before," she said after a long while of silence, "You're making changes to be a better role model for Duncan?"

"I'm not sure my aspirations have jumped all the way to 'role model', but yes," he replied.

"I need to do that, too," she said, "To keep that perspective, to be who I'll need to be for Shaun… but, damn, sometimes I don't even feel like a mother. I barely had time to learn how to be a parent before he was taken… and now he's ten? I'm already screwing it up and I don't even have him back yet."

"I get that… it's hard to find a balance," he said, "You want to be strong for them, protect them, but you don't want them to fear you… or worse, become like you. Setting an example… it's hard, too hard, sometimes."

"When did you start to feel like… you knew how to be a father?" she asked, turning over onto her stomach to look across her bed toward his.

He shook his head, "I'll let you know. I was so young when Duncan was born… I still needed parenting myself, he- … heck… I still do. I'm not sure why I ever thought I was ready to be a father, nevertheless a good one."

"You're making steps, that's what counts," she said, "I don't think anyone is ready to be a parent before it happens. You learn as you go."

"I guess… it seems strange that we're designed in such a way that you have to play trial and error with your own offspring," he said dejectedly, turning over as well and leaning up on his elbows to mirror her.

"Tell me about it," she sighed, "But I guess… step one, _find_ child… step two, figure out how to parent him."

He smiled, "You shouldn't worry… you're going to be a great mom. You already are. Half of it is willingness to fight for them, and you've proven that in spades."

"It's strange how scary it is. I can get used to all this shi- … stuff… mutants and ghouls and synths… molerats, mirelurks, deathclaws… but I'm scared to death of raising my own son," she said. Mac said nothing but nodded slowly, his look distant. He was likely feeling the very same way.

"We'll figure it out, I know we can. One step at a time," she said, in a way she hoped sounded encouraging. "We…" she said pointedly, smiling like she was waiting for a reward. He smiled back, then sighed heavily, as if releasing the tension of the conversation.

"On that note, what is _our_ next step?" he asked, "You said someone was drawing up plans to make this teleportation nonsense work?"

Damn, she'd hoped to put this off for a couple days, or at least until the morning. She didn't want to say she'd _purposefully_ not told him that she'd have to return to the Glowing Sea to get the schematics from Virgil… because that might be construed as lying. She felt it was more like her saving him from weeks worth of unnecessary anxiety.

She tried to stop her face from doing that thing… that nervous grimace that would tell Mac that she just, maybe, may have… not told him everything. Apparently she did a poor job of it because he groaned, rolling over into his blanket and hiding under the covers.

"Just tell me," he said defeatedly, his voice muffled though the sheets.

"Well… first we have to stop at the Railroad so they can decrypt the chip, or decode it, or de-something it for me," she said.

"Ugh. I hate how that guy looks at you," he grumbled.

"Deacon?" she asked incredulously.

"No - Tinker Tom," he said dryly, " _Yes, Deacon._ "

"Well you don't even have to look at him look at me, you can wait outside, I'm sure it'll just take a few minutes."

"You have no idea how long it will take."

"No, I don't," she agreed, "But if you'd like to continue to talk about that rather than the next step, I'm game."

He sighed heavily through the sheets, "What is it?"

She said it as casually as she could manage, "Then we just have to swing by Virgil's so we can grab the schematics."

"I swear to God, Cryo," he said threateningly, his voice still muffled through the blanket.

"It's going to be fine - "

"Back to the Glowing Sea?" he insisted, rolling back out of his cocoon and gaping at her, "Are we already forgetting about how that almost killed you?"

"That was totally different, we had to wander around for days looking for Virgil's hideout. We know exactly where he is now, we can just vertibird right on in there," she said, making a swooping motion with one hand and accenting it with a short, buzzing whistle. He shook his head and looked for a retort, but she'd caught the smallest, tiniest sliver of a smile. She repeated the vertibird demonstration, and he couldn't stop a full grin from appearing.

"Stop it, that's adorable," he said as she climbed out of her bed and swooshed the vertibird toward him, causing him to break into a full laugh. He grabbed her by the waist as she approached, surprising her when he was able to sweep her off her feet and over him so she was laying next to him. He kissed her fiercely… the kind of kiss she was starting to recognize as his way of attempting to maintain some kind of control when she'd made a decree he knew he couldn't argue with. It made her want to come up with all kinds of decrees.

"We can go tomorrow," he said finally. "Can we swing by Goodneighbor on the way? I'm expecting a letter from Duncan."

"Of course," she said with a smile. His diligence in writing to his son seemed to know no bounds, and she found it very endearing.

"I'm assuming you forgot your Brotherhood radio in Sanctuary?" he asked.

"Yep," she said cheerily, "I never have it when I need it."

"Alright, we should swing by Goodneighbor for mail call, then we can hit the Railroad on the way over to the airport," he said. "There's nothing I love more than being surrounded by suits of power armor filled with judgmental zealots who think I'm a vagabond."

"Oh they don't care," she said. "They know you're _my_ vagabond."

So he tickled her until her wounds hurt and he apologized and kissed her goodnight and they fell asleep in each others arms and the last thing she could remember thinking before she drifted off was that if it could just be like this, forever… this new world might not be so bad.


	23. Return to Sanctuary

She could easily say that never before had she looked at something and had _so little_ of a clue as to what the hell it meant. Over half the words looked made up, and every scribbled diagram looked like some kind of martian code. So when she and MacCready returned from visiting Virgil and handed the schematics to Sturges, she was relieved when he didn't just immediately laugh at her.

He studied it for about two minutes, _then_ he laughed at her.

After realizing she was being serious, however, he started to compile a list of parts they would need to complete the project. "There's a few specialty things you're going to have to hunt down," he explained as he jotted down the list on a scrap piece of paper. "We've actually got most of this in salvage already."

With that, she leveled a flat look at MacCready and said, "So, if you're ever wondering again why I take all that 'junk' and 'make you carry it', _this is why_. Tell him, Sturg."

Sturges simply raised an eyebrow, looking like he wasn't about to get mixed up in whatever that was. MacCready just stood with his arms crossed, leaning casually against the side of the house with a smug look on his face.

Suddenly, Dogmeat came tearing around the corner, leaping onto MacCready with enough force to knock him the ground. The dog then proceeded to stand on his chest and smother his face with licks. She couldn't stop from smiling as the man giggled and tried to fight off the hound, eventually getting him to relent enough to sit back up from his prone position.

"Hey, boy, nice to see you too," he said, giving the dog a rough pet on the head. Dogmeat did a cute half-howl in response, panting and nuzzling into MacCready's face, whimpering for attention.

"I see how it is, Dogmeat, you don't even give a crap about me anymore," she said dejectedly and Mac gave her a sympathetic look. Sturges finished the list and handed it to her.

"You should be able to find all that without too much trouble," he said. "I wrote down where you might want to look - military installations, telecommunications towers, hospitals. The other thing we're going to need… is power. So, so, so much power."

"But we can do it with generators?" she asked.

"We'll have to, unless you've got a functioning power plant sitting around somewhere you haven't told us about."

"Fresh out, sorry."

"You'll want to get some additional parts so we can build enough of them. I think I have what I need to make one, but we'll have to string a few together, three or four maybe."

"Copy that," she said, "Thanks Sturges, I owe you one. Or, like, twenty, actually."

"You just keep doing what you're doing, boss," he said, giving a sweeping look around the settlement as over a dozen settlers went about their work, "You're really making something out of this place."

" _We_ are," she corrected, then gave him a grateful smile and shook his hand. She turned to help MacCready up off the ground, receiving a greeting of licks from Dogmeat as she leaned over.

"Thanks, boy," she laughed. Sturges left to return to his work as Preston rounded the corner of the house with a bag of supplies slung over his back.

"General," he said with an acknowledging nod, "Nice to see you two got back safely, everything go well?"

"Yeah, I got the plans to build the… teleporter. We're going to do it here, over on that eastern foundation, if that's ok with you?" she said.

"Whatever you need, boss" Preston said. "I got word about a place that might be good for a settlement. If you have time while you're out, maybe you can scout it out? Get a beacon set up?"

"Definitely, show me where," she said.

"I'm going to go scrounge up some paper - write Duncan back," MacCready announced, flourishing the envelope he'd received while in Goodneighbor and giving Preston a polite nod as he turned to head toward her house. She followed the minuteman inside the house.

The radio was on inside, playing the funny one about civilization in the Congo. Though the building had originally been set up to house beds, it had turned into a sort of 'war room' for the Minutemen, with mattresses shoved against the walls to make room for a table in the center. Preston had found an oversized map of the immediate area based on her suggestion of checking local police stations, and they'd set it up on the table so they could better plan their strategies, as trying to scheme while hovered over the map on her Pip-Boy had proved difficult.

They'd salvaged old forks to stab into the table and act as markers for settlements. Chess pieces acted as population markers, bishops meant over fifteen, knights over ten, rooks over five. Pawns indicated ideal locations for settlements, and prone pawns were current settlements that had yet to agree to back the Minutemen. And to amuse themselves, she and Preston kept a king and queen placed at whichever settlement they were currently based out of, which seemed to inevitably be Sanctuary, though she imagined Preston moved hers to Diamond City whenever she took an extended absence.

They'd run old wiring from fork to fork to show established trade routes, and as Preston approached the table he grabbed another piece and strung it between the Taffington and Tenpines cutlery.

"Good," she said, "That's going to help a lot with the Tenpines water issue."

"Yeah, they finally agreed once I suggested that two of them do the route together… and I gave them a couple nice guns from the store, I hope you don't mind,"

"Of course not, whatever you need to do," she said, leaning over the map to see what might have changed in the last few weeks.

"There's still raiders giving them trouble along that route. I'll get some guys and take care of that though - I think this is a job more suited to your skills," he said with a grin.

"Meaning it's overrun with something horrible?" she asked as he grabbed a fork and stabbed it in the map south of the highway.

"Oh, Jamaica Plain," she said, "I had a cousin that lived down there for a while." He gave her an expectant grin. "He moved to Kansas," she added casually.

"Well, that's good, because now it's infested by feral ghouls," he said.

"Excellent."

"If you can get a beacon set up, I know there's quite a few people down that way that will be willing to set up there, and it's a nice central location that will be great for us as a base of operations in the south. I know you have a lot going on right now, but it'd be good for us strategically."

"I'm all over it," she said, "Other than a few specialty parts I need to hunt down, I'm basically stuck waiting for Sturges to work his magic anyways."

"Great, I'll send the parts you need for the beacon down with a caravan. There's a house south of the square - I'll have them mark it and put it under the foundation," he said.

"Sounds good, we'll leave in the morning. There's a few places we need to stop for those parts but it shouldn't take more than a week."

"We?" he questioned with a knowing smirk.

"Uh, yeah," she all but stammered, not realizing what she'd said.

"You and MacCready seem different?" he said, and she couldn't quite tell if it was a statement or a question. She racked her brain… had they touched, kissed, anything, since they got back to town? They hadn't made a point not to, but she didn't think they had.

"I'm not trying to call you out," he said quickly. "I'm just… I'm happy for you guys," he said sincerely, "I think you're good together."

"Thanks, Preston," she said, unable to hide her surprise. She'd always thought that despite warming to MacCready as a comrade, Preston would have a harder time accepting him as… whatever he was. Boyfriend? That seemed like such a dumb term.

The song ended and Travis's voice crackled through the radio, "The vault dweller and her male companion were seen days ago leaving Diamond City hand-in-hand… makes you wonder what kind of craziness those two love birds are getting up to out in the Commonwealth. Let's hope they stay safe and return soon."

"Oh, Jesus," she grumbled, burying her face in her hands. Of course, that's how he knew. Preston did a poor job of stifling a laugh, then looked a little sympathetic when she looked back up at him.

"Sounds like you guys are becoming quite the hot couple in Diamond City," he said.

"I have no idea what's happening, Preston, it's like Travis _wants_ me to end him."

"It's kind of sweet, though, right?" he said hearteningly, in that overly optimistic manner he had honed so well, "You're giving the people of the Commonwealth some hope… that a happy ending is possible."

She gave him a thankful smile, hiding well what her true reaction to his sentiment was. A happy ending? How remote of a possibility was that? Preston tended to be optimistic beyond reason, but that might truly fall into delusion. She gave the minuteman a playful salute, then a genuine pat on the back as she left the room to head back to her house.


	24. Celebrity Status

Though clouds had rolled in and covered the sky with grey, she could tell by the dim light that the sun had almost set as she crossed the road toward her house. She felt a new sensation as she walked through the front door. Before, it had brought her a strange sense of comfort, like her previous life would never be too far from grasp if she could still sit on her own couch in her own living room, however destroyed.

This time, however, walking into it felt different. Like it was from an entirely different lifetime… and not the right one. Every day that life was feeling more and more like it'd actually happened two hundred years ago, and not the eight or so months it'd been from her perspective. This world was so visceral, so dramatic, it was sinking its claws into her and pulling her away from the life she remembered.

But as she rounded the corner into her bedroom to find MacCready sitting on the bed with his knees tucked up, writing furiously and holding his tongue between his lips in a thoughtful, childlike manner, she was reminded of why that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. That world might be slipping away from her, but there was a whole new one here that was ready for her to dive into. She should take a page out of Mac's book and just roll with it.

"Male companion?" MacCready said disapprovingly as she walked through the door.

She rolled her eyes and flicked the switch on the radio to turn it off, "You act like I have some kind of control over what Travis says. You were the one that wouldn't let me kill him."

"I might be changing my mind," he replied, scooting over to make room for her to sit next to him on the bed.

"Preston thinks we're giving people hope," she said, sitting down next to him and tucking her knees up to her chin.

"If we're all the hope the Commonwealth has, everyone's in a lot of trouble."

"Writing Duncan?" she asked.

"Yeah, I wanted to tell him some about the Greeks," he said, referring to the history she'd been sharing with him over the last few days.

During their vertibird travels, MacCready had made a point of asking Danse a series of, for lack of a better term, smart-ass questions about the Brotherhood.

 _'Is it really necessary to leap fifty feet to the ground from a hovering vertibird, or do you just do it because you can?'  
'Where did Maxson get that awesome haircut?'  
'To what degree would you say power armor chafes?'_

Though she tended to try and temper Mac against infuriating Danse, she was finding the whole thing quite amusing before she realized the paladin was about one question away from tossing him out the side of the aircraft. She decided then it'd be best to intervene by answering his next question herself and trying to veer him off topic.

 _'Is Ad Victoriam actually some kind of innuendo?'_ spiraled from a discussion of Latin, to talking about the Romans, to talking about the Greeks. Mac had been particularly interested in the mythology, and wanted to know everything she could remember about the gods, monsters and creatures of the ancient stories. She was happy to oblige, and he went blissfully unaware of how close he'd been to experiencing the full wrath of the Brotherhood.

"Look at you, spreading ancient knowledge all across the Eastern Seaboard," she said with a grin.

"Can you tell me more about what the hydra looks like?" he asked.

"I can draw it for you," she suggested.

"You can draw?" he asked, a little surprised.

"I'm no DaVinci, but yeah, I can draw a little."

"DaVinci?" he asked with a raised brow.

"Seriously, you know about Phantom of the Opera, but not DaVinci or Zeus?" she said. She reached down and dug a bottle out from under the bed. Vodka, that'd do.

"Drink," she insisted.

"What? No - that game is over," he said incredulously.

"Well it just started again. It's going to be ongoing until I feel like your historical knowledge isn't so da- … darn random," she said.

"I'm not sure alcohol will help that task," he said, taking the drink anyway. "So long as it goes both ways," he clarified.

"Of course."

"When the bloatfly shoots that spiky sh- …crap… at you, it's actually shooting its own maggots," he said, way too proudly.

"Ugh, that's horrifying. How long have you been holding on to that one?" she asked, accepting the bottle back and taking a drink as punishment. He didn't answer but leaned over to kiss her cheek. "Want me to draw it right on there?" she asked, setting the bottle down and gesturing to his partly finished letter.

"No, here," he said, handing her a blank sheet of paper and an extra pencil from behind his ear. "You could… write something to go along with the drawings, if you want," he said, trying to seem nonchalant.

"Oh," she said, surprised by his request, "Sure, like write him a letter?"

"Yeah," he said, "I've told him all about you… I mean not _all_ about you," he said sheepishly, "But… he loves hearing about history and I think he's caught on you're my informant. I think he'd like to hear from the source."

She picked up an old stack of folders to prop on her knees while she drew the hydra and thought about what she might write in the letter. She was a little… nervous about it. She didn't know Duncan at all, and she didn't know what kids were even really like these days. She'd only encountered a handful of them, and though they seemed more or less…normal, they were also decidedly not. They were distrustful, shrewd, sometimes ruthless, and rightfully so. They just hadn't been afforded enough opportunity for innocence like children should.

She finished up a basic drawing of the hydra, embellishing it a bit by adding a sword-wielding Heracles about to chop off one of its heads. She wrote a short letter below it introducing herself and telling him a little bit about what Heracles was up to. She asked a few questions about what his favorite stories were, historical or otherwise, and told him she hoped he was feeling better. She hadn't had enough nerve to bring it up with MacCready yet, but she'd gathered from the increase in the number of letters he'd been receiving that it could only be good news.

"Think we can stop at Goodneighbor during our hunt so we can drop these off with Daisy?" he asked as he folded the letters.

"We can, but I spoke with Carla and she's willing to act as a postman for Sanctuary and a few of the other settlements on her route," she said.

"Really?" he asked with clear astonishment, "How many caps did that cost you?"

"Eh, my stash was getting heavy anyways."

"You didn't need to do that," he said.

"It's really for my own good, Goodneighbor isn't on the way to or from _everything_ after all," she said with a grin. "I also may have convinced Danse to let Daisy bring the letters directly to him - they send transports and supplies back and forth to D.C. almost daily. You should be able to get letters back in less than a week now instead of every two or three."

"Really?" he said with some disbelief, "I'm… a little surprised he agreed."

"See, the Brotherhood isn't all that bad," she grinned.

"Yeah, yeah…" he said, then added genuinely, "Thanks, Cryo… that's easily one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me." He kissed her in a patient, thankful way that made her very glad she'd gone to the effort.

"We should steer clear of that neck of the woods anyways," he added, "I'd feel bad if we ran into Travis and you had to kill him."

She groaned. Writing to Duncan had distracted her enough that she'd all but forgotten about the radio host's Commonwealth-wide update about her and MacCready's relationship.

"What happened to your theory of ' _sometimes, the crazies just need killing_ '? He's clearly lost all sense of self-preservation," she pointed out.

"You told me before," he said, with a smile she knew to be afraid of, "That back in your time it was common for the media to combine celebrities' names when referring to them as a couple?"

"No," she said flatly. "Please, just no."

"But it's a good one," he grinned.

"No, no," she said, burying her head in her hands.

"MacCryo," he announced proudly.

She half laughed, half groaned and said, "For the love of God, don't tell Travis."


	25. Barbecue

"Oh man, here? Don't tell me you believe in that buried treasure nonsense," MacCready said as they approached the sign that read 'Welcome to Jamaica Plain'.

Her eyes grew big and she rotated toward him slowly, "Buried… _treasure_?" He shook his head, realizing what he'd started. "What are you talking about Mr. MacCready and why have you been keeping this from me all this time?"

"Certainly not because I thought you might react like this…" he said dryly.

"Ok, new plan, soldier. Step one, wipe out these ghouls and set up the beacon. Step two, find the mother f- … the buried treasure," she grinned, raising her gun and marching dutifully into town.

Unfortunately it took them most of the day to clear the ghouls and get the beacon built and powered up, so it was almost nightfall by the time they started poking around looking for clues as to where the treasure might be located. It didn't take long for them to spot it however, the hallway lined with dozens upon dozens of laser tripwires was conspicuous, to say the least.

After tripping a handful of lasers and almost getting killed by turrets multiple times, they finally realized there was another entrance and she could just pick the lock to the door. MacCready had a hearty laugh at what the treasure _actually_ was, which was an organized collection of two hundred year old crap, more or less, acting as a time capsule. Little did they know the whole world was about to become one big time capsule. She did find a nice, barely used shotgun and a healthy stash of shells on the corpse of a previous treasure hunter, however, which she appreciated as she'd run out of fusion shells while dispatching the last of the ghouls in town.

They returned to the house where they'd set up the recruitment beacon to rest for the night. They picked the place over for loot, finding a couple bottles of wine, a bottle of bourbon, and a healthy collection of pre-war herbs stuffed behind an old wood burning stove on the second floor. Mac made removing the cork from the wine seem like the world's most arduous task, then finally offered it out to her.

"Ladies first," he said. She took a swig and instantly regretted it.

"Nope," she coughed and hacked, "It's vinegar."

"What?" he asked, staring at the bottle then taking a whiff, recoiling from the unexpected smell. "I thought wine was supposed to get better with age…"

"It can… or it can turn to vinegar," she said with smile, taking a drink of the bourbon to wash the horrible taste down. Then… she had an idea.

"Hey… go kill us something to eat," she said offhandedly as she dug the herbs back out of her bag.

"Is that all I am to you? Just some muscles with a gun who can catch your dinner?"

She gave him a disparaging look, and he responded with a pouty, disheartened salute, then turned and left. She'd taken a supply of tatos along with them before leaving Sanctuary… using those, a few of the herbs, and some vinegar… she basically had everything she needed to make barbecue sauce. Some vegetable oil would be nice, but she could make do.

She set everything out on the table and found a pot to dump it all in. She cleaned her knife with some purified water before using it to mix it all up, hoping it was enough to keep it sanitary, though the cooking process would help as well. The fact that everyone in this place didn't constantly have some kind of foodborne illness was beyond her.

She poked around in the yard for some relatively dry wood, then grimaced as she dug out some old paper money for kindling… it still seemed wrong to light money on fire… and had the oven lit and the sauce cooking before MacCready returned with his kill.

"Molerat's the best I could do," he announced as he walked back through the door, tossing the carcass on the floor by the doorway. "Jes- … holy… ok, what is that smell, Cryo?"

She looked up from stirring the pot with concern - did he think it smelled bad? He was all but drooling as she looked over at him though, gaping at her like she'd grown a second head.

"Skin it _outside_ , maybe?" she suggested, giving the dead animal a disapproving look. "And find some kind of metal grate to stick in the oven so we can use it to grill."

"Whatever you say, ma'am," he said approvingly. He sounded like he'd be willing to do just about anything for a chance at finding out what that smell actually tasted like.

"Never call me that again," she called after him, but he'd turned tail to attend to his tasks too quickly. Ma'am? Seriously?

It actually turned out quite a bit better than she thought it would. Though there was a functioning table in the kitchen, the chairs had seen better days, so they stood facing one another on one side of the table, holding their tin plates full of barbecued molerat meat, though she chose to imagine it was chicken. She grinned at Mac as he completely ignored the sauce he'd smeared across his face in favor of devouring the meat as quickly as possible.

"This is so ridiculously good," he said with clear astonishment.

"The potato part of the tato makes it interesting, but I'm not entirely against it," she agreed.

"Potato?" he asked with a grimace, placing the emphasis on the 'Po'.

"Take a drink," she said, motioning to the bourbon.

He sighed and took his punishment, then said, "You'd think I'd learn to just not admit when I don't know something."

"You'd think," she agreed with a smug smile.

"Cryo, I feel betrayed," he said as he finished the last of his molerat leg, wiping his fingers and face off with a rag. "How have you been hiding this skill from me all this time?"

"There's not much to work with these days," she said, "We clearly need to keep our eyes out for more herbs."

"Imagine if we got some radstag meat instead? Or brahmin? Man, you can shoot things in the head, _and_ cook. You're the perfect housewife," he teased, stepping toward her.

"Shut up, I had a job - " He cut her off with a kiss, and she set her plate down on the table absentmindedly.

"I've got… stuff," she said, referring to the sauce that had surely made its way onto her face.

"I'll get it," he said, leaning in to kiss her cheeks in an effort to help her clean up. Though it should have been a gross act, it was actually kind of alluring and she found herself giggling as he mauled her with the sloppy kisses. She'd apparently set her meal down poorly, because as he wrapped his arms around her and pushed her toward the table to pin her against it, the tin plate fell to the floor with a surprisingly loud clamor. They ignored it as they focused wholly on pressing themselves as close to one another as they could manage.

"What's that?" something outside growled. They froze as they heard the familiar, low, rumbling voice of a super mutant.


	26. Strike 2

They quietly crouched to the floor and exchanged a concerned look before crawling their way toward the closest window to take cover on either side of it. They sat silently for a few long moments, hoping the angle from the ground was sharp enough that the mutant hadn't seen them. She caught MacCready's eye and motioned to the fire that was still burning in the oven. He shook his head and she nodded agreement - the sound and smoke from dousing it would likely act as an even bigger signal than just leaving it lit.

Not that it mattered, because seconds later a super mutant kicked the door down, literally, and came barreling in toward them, swinging a board stuck with rusty nails. MacCready ducked and rolled away just in time as the strike landed on the floor where he'd been moments earlier. The mutant was happily distracted by him, so she took the opportunity to dash over and grab the shotgun she'd procured earlier.

She fumbled trying to open the magazine tube, cursing herself for not having bothered to learn to load it. She looked back at Mac who was rolling back and forth on the ground, just barely dodging the mutant's relentless hammering. She finally got it open, clumsily loading a few shells in and closing it back up just seconds before the mutant roared, turning to swing at her instead.

She ducked the assault and lifted the gun, firing directly into the mutant's chest, the proximity causing blood and gore to fly everywhere. It stumbled away from her a few feet, then dropped heavily to the floor, dead. She grimaced and gave her head a shake as some chunks of flesh fell off her. She shook out her wrist, the kickback from the weapon had been surprisingly fierce. She stepped back to the window and surveyed the street below, but saw and heard nothing.

She turned back to Mac, who was giving her an anxious look, still laying on the floor where he'd been dodging attacks. She wiped the mutant's blood off her forehead and sighed heavily. With this kind of negative reinforcement, it might not take long before they'd be afraid to touch each other.

Mac seemed to have a similar thought as he looked up at her and said, "Someday, we'll learn to find somewhere safe before trying to make out."

"Make out?" she said with a grin, raising her eyebrows. He smiled a little, then he actually _blushed_ , and it might have been the most adorable thing she'd ever seen. She reached down and helped him stand, but he didn't release her hand, instead holding it both of his and standing close to her, giving her a once over.

"You've got a little…" he said, gesturing to indicate the blood and gore that was now basically covering her.

"What, you don't want to kiss me now that I'm covered in super mutant flesh?" she asked.

"It's cool, if you're into that kind of thing," he joked. She tried to call his bluff by leaning toward him with her bloody face, but of course, he took it in stride, planting an absolutely normal kiss on her cheek.

"Just, gross, MacCready," she said, shoving him playfully.

"Aw come on, I should get some bonus points for that, right?" he said, wiping the blood from his face, "I'm into you, even when covered in the carnage of your most recent kill? You're the one that always says you gotta roll with the 'new world order'."

"No," she said, shaking her head and grabbing the bottle of bourbon, "Close, sort of, but that's not proper use of the term."

"Come on!" he said. She responded by handing the bottle to him. He sighed and took the drink.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to get me drunk," he said.

"Always," she replied, as if it was the most obvious truth he'd ever uttered. "That's what this is, right? Kill things, get drunk, fall asleep, repeat? Or I guess more often, get drunk, kill things, fall asleep, repeat."

"No, this is two 'not' alcoholics covered in gore, too afraid to keep touching one another because it seems to be some kind of super mutant summons," he said dryly, with just a hint of disappointment. She stepped closer to him, so her face was mere inches from his. She ran her fingers delicately along his jawline and he raised an intrigued eyebrow at her. He was clearly ready to hear whatever she'd come up with to ease his worries.

"You had me at alcoholics," she said sweetly.

He growled and they fought playfully for a while, though eventually he relented. He helped her wipe the blood off her face and clothes, then they drug the dead mutant's body outside and threw it off the porch, then leaned the busted down door back up against the frame and slid a dresser in front of it, then finished their meal, then finished the bourbon. She took first watch, keeping herself awake by practicing loading and unloading the shotgun so she wouldn't be so dreadfully slow at it next time and almost get Mac killed.


	27. Fallon's

"I bought my prom dress here…" she said with a grimace as they stood in the entrance to the Misses' department. MacCready turned and looked toward a shopping cart that had been filled with a bloody bundle of bones, meat and flesh.

"Huh," was all he said. On their way to Milton General Hospital, where they hoped to find a biometric scanner, they'd decided to stop by Fallon's Department Store based on a tip Deacon supplied. Of course it'd been overrun by super mutants. They were quickly becoming her very favorite Commonwealth adversary.

"So _Deacon_ claims there's loot in the basement, huh?" MacCready said quietly as they crept forward through the racks and shelves on their way to the back staircase. She wasn't sure why they were still bothering to be quiet, as they'd most certainly already killed everything in the building a long time ago.

An accidental chain reaction caused by a grenade, a couple mutant suiciders, and some… either fortunately or unfortunately placed oil spills had resulted in basically the entire atrium erupting into nuclear fire. The commotion had drawn a shocking number of super mutants toward the area, making it relatively easy for them to pick them off one-by-one from their vantage point on the top floor.

Luckily they found three different protectrons that she was able to hack and deploy before the whole place burnt to the ground. Since they'd killed over twenty super mutants throughout the whole debacle, they hoped this meant that most, if not all, of the beasts had already been disposed of.

"He claims all the pre-war safes are untouched," she said.

"Why doesn't he just come himself then, why pass it to you?" he asked pointedly.

"Well, clearly because he's in love with me," she said dryly, rolling her eyes at him. He just grinned, he never seemed to have any true degree of jealousy toward Deacon, but enjoyed giving her shit about it anyway. She offered the real explanation, "He's aware of my ability to pick locks… Plus, can you imagine the Railroad trying to come in here and clear this mess out?"

He nodded in agreement as they entered the stairwell and headed down into the basement. Though the Railroad's defenses were strong, she wasn't convinced they were overly skilled offensively. Deacon seemed to be able to hold his own, but he was the exception in more than one way.

"I have to be honest, you don't seem like a 'prom' kind of girl to me," Mac said.

"How do you even know what to expect from a prom?" she asked as they arrived at the bottom of the stairs. One look across the room and she could easily spot the Railroad's symbol on the side of a counter - an indication of the location of the secret door's release.

"I've seen magazines. I can imagine it, ok?" he said with some feigned sensitivity. She leaned over the counter awkwardly to try and push the button as Mac walked around the other side and pressed it, eyeing her strange approach with a raised eyebrow. The mechanism released with a surprisingly quiet bang, revealing the hidden door as it swung open slowly.

"I would kind of like to see the prom this world would come up with," she said, hopping back down off the counter to cross over toward the safe room.

"Oh so now my timeline isn't good enough for you?" he asked, following her inside. There were six safes lining the walls of the room, two large and four small. Picking them would take a while, but likely be worth it.

" _Timeline_ , Mac? I haven't actually travelled in time," she said, digging out a bobby pin and screwdriver to start work on the first lock.

"Would you want to, if you could? Go back?" he asked. She stopped her task and looked over at him, as basically every drop of humor from the conversation had suddenly evaporated. He looked serious, curious and a little apprehensive about what she might say.

"Would the bombs still go off?" she asked.

He considered it, then said, "No, you can stop the war."

"What if I meet my past self?" she prompted, turning back to continue working on the lock.

"Well, you can't, that'd be messy. You'd just have to live a separate life," he said.

"Can I take anyone with me?" she asked.

He considered the amendment, then said, "Sure."

"Ok," she said. "Hey Mac, do you want to go back in time with me?"

"What if I say no?" he asked.

"Then we don't go," she said.

"What about proms and running water and accurate historical accounts and being able to rest without the fear of getting murdered in your sleep?"

"No matter what happens, I don't think I'll ever feel that level of safety again," she said. But what she didn't want to admit, to Mac or herself, was the feeling she kept getting that she might actually be better at the apocalypse than she had been at a normal life.

"What if taking me back with you rips a hole in the space-time continuum?" he asked, his tone lightening a bit.

"What kind of comics have you been reading?" she asked with a grin, then requested some clarification, "Why would that happen, exactly?"

"You know, if you stop the bombs it changes everything after that. I probably would never be born. So you're bringing back someone that can't exist," he said.

"You don't think you'd still be born?"

"I dunno, if I knew something about my parents I could probably answer that better."

"Fair enough," she replied.

"So come on, it's the eternal question - to rip a hole in space-time or not?" he asked.

She considered it then said, "Screw it, I'll be selfish."

"Ok, so we get there successfully, space-time is safe," he said.

"This has turned into a 'Choose Your Own Adventure'," she said with a smile, and by the look on his face he had no idea what she was talking about. She sighed, "Alright… add another drink to the tally."


	28. Story Time

"So, what now?" he continued his line of questioning as she broke a bobby pin and dug out another. "You had a 'career', right? You go back to work?"

"Well, if I can't be myself then I won't even have a degree anymore," she said. "Like, from college," she clarified just as the lock finally gave way. She opened it and moved onto the next while Mac opened his pack and held it under the safe, not bothering to look at the items before scooping them all into the bag.

"I know what a degree is, Cryo, come on," he said.

"Well, no… it wouldn't be that simple, I don't think," she answered, "This world has changed me, for better or worse. I could go back in time, but I couldn't go back to who I was."

"What would you do? Scavenging doesn't seem like a legitimate pre-war career path," he said.

"We'd make a good Bonnie and Clyde maybe, without all the murdering. Or we could be like Bonnie and Clyde meets Robin Hood," she said with a grin. He returned her look with a suspiciously blank face.

"Really, neither?" she asked, and he shook his head. "Ok, add two more drinks," she sighed, continuing to move forward.

"How do I know you aren't just making stuff up?" he asked.

"You don't."

"That's it, I'm making a list and asking Daisy about all this shi- … stuff, next time we're in Goodneighbor," he said.

"You think I'd lie to you?" she asked with a grin. She got the four small safes open in a handful of minutes then moved onto the larger ones, which unfortunately sported two separate lock mechanisms and were substantially harder to crack.

"What do you think I would have done, if I was born two hundred years ago?" MacCready asked as he absentmindedly flipped a cap on his finger and watched her work.

"Good question…" she said, "Let me think on that one."

"Should we stay here for the night?" he suggested after she finally got the first big safe open. "We can hit Milton General in the morning and still be back to Sanctuary before dusk." She agreed, then started on the last safe while he left to scavenge some bedding.

MacCready returned with an enormous grin and an entire cart stuffed full of pillows and blankets, announcing proudly, "There was a sale in the linens department." He insisted she clear out so he could fill the small room wall-to-wall with them, then rushed away to get a second load, pushing the cart fast, then hopping up to ride on the back of it.

"You're going to break your head open," she called after him, but he was long gone. She groaned as she realized how much she'd just sounded like her mother. Maybe this was what it was like to be a parent… constantly worrying about someone, but having basically no control over what they did. It actually seemed strangely analogous.

She finished unloading the last safe, then prepared the remainder of what they had left to eat, save a couple of cans of Cram that she really didn't want to have to resort to. They really would need to return to Sanctuary tomorrow, so she hoped Milton General had what they were looking for, or they'd have to head back out again before Sturges would be able to get started on building the schematics. She finished preparing the food and found a lantern to light inside by the time MacCready returned, dumping the contents of the cart into the room to create another layer of bedding.

"Cushy enough for you?" she asked.

"Let's see," he said, then she yelped as he picked her up and with a short running start, tossed her through the door and onto the pile. She tried to hop back up to retaliate, but she had sunk pretty deeply into the pile… and also, it was really, really comfortable. He hopped in after her, shutting the door behind himself. She drug herself toward a wall and leaned against it to finish digging the rest of the food out of her pack, Mac plopping down beside her, quite pleased with himself.

"Ok, change of plans, we now live here," he said with a grin as he languished in the linens.

"I don't know about that," she said, handing him a cup of dried meat and a fresh tato, "But, this seems secure enough for the night. We shouldn't need to sleep in shifts." She passed him a bottle of water, then added casually, "Can you sing?"

He laughed, "Why would you ask me that?"

"You could be a musician, maybe," she said.

"A musician, really?" he said incredulously as they started to eat.

"I don't know!" she said defensively, "Just a feeling… ok how about an architect? Your ideas for the riverside building were great."

"That's math and stuff though, right?" he said skeptically.

"A pilot? You've got fast reactions, sharp eyes," she said.

"Ugh, like, in the military? I can't imagine fitting in with those Brotherhood goons."

"The Brotherhood might be the nearest approximation to the military, but… they're, seriously, way more intense," she explained. He looked like he was considering it, then sat up straight and tried a salute.

"Nah," he said.

"Veterinarian?"

"…Like… sick puppies…?" he asked innocently.

"Used car salesman?"

"Ok now you're just being mean."

"No, no, sorry. Ok… what about hunting? You're a great shot," she said, "That skill would translate."

"How can hunting be a job?"

"You know, like a _pro-hunter_. You could teach rich white men to shoot guns. Like a… celebrity hunter."

"A celebrity hunter?" he asked disbelievingly, "Please tell me that was not actually a thing."

She sighed, "Yeah… I dunno, staying in this timeline is sounding like a better idea."

"Oh I don't know, we don't need to give up on it just yet. Running water and clean mattresses are at stake after all. Maybe tell me more about Bonnie, Clyde and Robin?" he asked, leaning onto her shoulder and looking up at her innocently to indicate he was ready for a story.

"Ha, ok," she said, finishing up their small meal and settling down further into the nest of blankets, Mac adjusting so he could lay in the crook of her arm in a manner that made her heart skip a beat. She started with Robin Hood, choosing the rendition of the tale her father had liked to tell as a bedtime story. She left out the parts she was fairly certain he had made up in an effort to drag it out over the course of weeks. She never liked it when stories ended.

MacCready asked a lot of questions and he got more and more pointed with each until she eventually realized he was purposefully trying to veer the narrative in unexpected directions and trying to see how their own story could somehow fit into these characters' lives. So she happily played along because this innocent, talkative, uninhibited side of Mac was her very favorite so far. The sense of childlike amazement he held at hearing the tales made her wonder with a heavy heart if it was possible that no one had ever sat down and told him a story in his entire life.

She found she had to pause every few sentences to silently remind herself not to fall too hard.


	29. New Home

"Commonwealth Savings Bank of MacCready - "

"Shush, you," she said, reaching into Mac's bag and pulling out the biometric scanner. She set it down on Sturges's workbench next to the other parts they'd collected over the last week.

"That's it," Sturges said, "Nice work. I'll get started right away."

"Thank you," she said genuinely.

"It'll take a few weeks to build," he said.

"It's fine, it'll take as long as it takes," she said. "Just let me know where I can help, I'll do what I can."

"Of course - you've worked on the generators in the past, feel free to take a couple settlers and get started on that in the morning," he suggested. "Did you guys get a tour of the new building?" He was talking about the riverside structure they'd finally been able to finish since MacCready had got the project rolling while she was off almost getting herself killed in the Glowing Sea.

"Not yet," she said. "I can't wait to check it out. Did the blueprints hold?"

"You bet," he said, "Boardwalk overlooking the river, space for the storefronts on the first floor, private quarters for minutemen officials on the second floor… and the third." He smirked at MacCready in a very obvious and she thought… disturbing… way.

"Third floor?" she asked. There'd only ever been plans for two. Honestly she was concerned none of them knew enough about architecture to try and build too high. Preston approached from the tato fields, wiping the dirt off his hands with a rag.

"Did you show her?" he asked MacCready, who shook his head.

"Ok, explain yourselves," she demanded, suddenly feeling conspired against.

"Mac suggested we have one of the rooms made up for our general," Preston said with a smile. Did he just call him… _Mac_?

"No, no," she said. She'd specifically designated the rooms as generic for whichever of the higher ranking officers were in town. The idea was to act as an incentive… as absolutely no one ever wanted to be in charge.

"It's too late, boss," Sturges said, raising his hands as if to absolve himself.

"We had all your things moved over while you were gone," Preston explained. She just gaped at the three of them, then turned toward Mac as he stepped in front of her, speaking in a lower tone.

"I could tell you didn't want to keep staying in that house," he said, glancing toward her old home. She sighed. He was right, she didn't want to keep sleeping there. It was a constant reminder of everything she'd lost, and was probably why she'd leaned toward staying in Diamond City so much over the last few months.

"The house will stay, but now you'll have somewhere new to… get a fresh start."

"You're using the wrong pronoun," she said. He looked confused at first, but then smiled in a way that seemed both surprised and genuine. She realized that she had basically just asked him to move in with her…. not that they'd spent a night more than an arm's reach away from each other in months.

"Thanks for doing that guys, you really didn't have to," she said to the three of them.

"You deserve it," Preston said, "The Minutemen would never have been able to do so much so quickly without your help. That's if we even got out of Concord alive to start with." They were all startled by a loud strike of thunder. It wasn't a warm rumble that meant welcome rain, but a vicious crack that meant incoming radiation.

"Damn, rad storm," Preston said, turning to look out toward the valley and the southern sky beyond as foreboding, dark green clouds began to build, rolling quickly toward them. "We should hunker down for the night. Might be a good time to break in your new digs, General."

She thanks Preston and Sturges again, then followed MacCready as he led her toward the riverside structure. The building sat right on the river, with a large section of decking extending out from the ground floor to create a sort of boardwalk along the river. A third floor had been added, spanning about half the width of the total floorplan on the northern side. It had a separate entrance in the form of a staircase that led up one side of the building. She could see as they walked up the stairs that on the other half of the third floor, they'd set up a small patio area that held a workbench, storage, and a dog house.

She followed him up the staircase and into the small, though more than adequate, apartment-sized room. Inside there was a small kitchen with a wood burning stove, a storage area stacked with various containers for ammo and weaponry, and a small balcony that, from this height, afforded a pretty nice view of the valley southeast of the river. They'd even installed a ceiling fan above the bed, which she appreciated because she'd always been a warm sleeper.

Then she saw it - that damned moon monkey that they'd found while clearing the raiders out of a Super Duper Mart. It sat, mangled, on a trunk at the foot of the bed. It was possible that the monkey had caught her off guard, and she'd shot the shit out of it before realizing what it was. Mac had found the whole incident extremely entertaining, and insisted on carrying her prize kill back with them so he could give her endless grief about it. She was half surprised he hadn't mounted it on the wall taxidermy-style.

"We'll salvage a table and chairs, couches and such eventually, but we got all your things moved in at least," MacCready explained.

"Thanks, Mac," she said genuinely, with a little bit of disbelief. How they managed to keep this from her, she wasn't sure, but she was grateful to have somewhere other than her former house to start calling home.

He kissed her cheek in response, then began to walk around and close the shutters on the windows as the wind picked up and the color outside started to fade to a sickly green haze, thunder and lightning cracking across the sky violently.

She turned on a few of the lights as the sky had darkened considerably, then turned on the radio, adjusting the tuning until she could hear Travis's voice crackling through. "It's looking like this storm will be rolling through for the next few hours, so hunker down for a while and enjoy some smooth tunes. Here's an appropriate one from Skeeter Davis."

 _It's the End of the World_ began to play and she turned the volume up, up, up… MacCready turned to give her an inquisitive look.

"Sorry," she said, turning the volume back down to a normal level, "Instinct."

"Ok, explain," he said, crossing over toward her as more vicious thunder cracked outside.

"When I was a kid and there was a bad thunderstorm, my dad used to turn the radio up really loud to drown out the noise. He'd dance with me until the worst of it passed. I think he was trying to distract me… I think he thought I was scared," she said.

"Scared of a thunderstorm?" he asked with some disbelief.

"When I was really young, maybe. I didn't have real monsters to be afraid of like you do now," she said. They were both startled by a particularly close crack of thunder. "As I got older, I just kept playing along with it because… well, I just wanted to dance with him."

Mac smiled then slowly turned the volume up on the radio, "May I have this dance?" He offered his hand out toward her and she could do nothing but gape at him for a few long moments.

"You can dance?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Let's find out," he replied. She took his hand in hers and set the other on his waist.

"I'll lead," she said.

"I'll follow," he said softly, and her heart just about fell out of her chest.


	30. Master Lock

Three long, hot days passed, though despite the heat they made good headway on their various projects. She worked on the generators with a handful of settlers while Sturges, Preston, Mac and a half dozen others got started on the teleporter pieces. Nick sent word up with Carla that he planned to come up in a few days to help out as well. Though she was grateful for the extra hand, she was mostly relieved by the moral support she knew his presence would lend.

She wiped off the day's sweat and grime in the river before grabbing a bucket of purified water from the water pump and returning to her room, where she found MacCready lying on the bed, writing.

"Replying to Duncan?" she asked, setting the bucket of water by the stove.

"Yeah, I wanted to tell him about Robin Hood," he said, tapping the pencil thoughtfully on his chin. "So, I get it… to a point. He steals from the rich, gives to the poor. But _he_ is poor."

"Actually, in some renditions, he's nobility," she said.

"Ok, but he lives in the woods, right? Hunts for food, wears the same rags day in, day out. He should be keeping some of that loot for himself, right?"

"That's not the point."

"But… he's giving away all his caps," he said innocently.

She laughed, "Gold, probably, or silver, but yes. He's making a sacrifice for the greater good. Standing up to the man, standing up for the disenfranchised. Stuff like that."

He sighed, seemingly unable to fully grasp Robin Hood's motivations.

"Maybe he'd like Bonnie and Clyde better," he said pensively, "I'm not sure."

"Take your time, tell him both. I'm going to whip up some more of that barbecue sauce," she said, digging out the herbs they'd found in Jamaica Plain.

"Hel- …heck… yes you are," he said with a grin, then stood up and cut her off before she could cross the room toward their stash of tatos. "When you're done, I'll grill if… you wanted to write back."

He handed her an envelope that had 'CRYO! Sanctuery Hils, CW' written on it in youthful handwriting. She grinned and took it, abandoning the herbs so she could rip it open. Mac smiled and returned to the bed to continue writing as she hopped up on the counter to read the letter. It was adorable beyond description…

He liked her story, but thought instead of killing the hydra, it'd be cool if Heracles instead learned to ride it and then moved to the desert to be a cowboy and/or sheriff.  
He wondered if she wrote her very own story, would she think 'Buckshot' was a good name for a character?  
He liked her nickname, and hoped one day he would have one that cool.  
Would she say Dogmeat was _her_ dog?  
Did she name Dogmeat herself? Because, he felt like something cute, like 'Bumper' might be better. Then the bad guys wouldn't expect him to be so fierce.  
He hoped his dad was safe.  
He wondered if she were to start her own story, did she think this was a good first line…

And it went on like that for two full pages. It was so sweet she could hardly handle it, and couldn't stop thinking about what her response would be as she started working on the sauce. It made her miss Shaun… miss what she'd been missing all these years as he grew up. Did he have that same sense of wonder?

She finished the sauce, handing the pot to MacCready in exchange for his pencil and paper, then sat down on the bed to respond to Duncan. Her reply was a bit longer than she expected, but considering the time it took these days, even with Danse's help, to send a letter 450 miles, she figured saying more was better than saying less.

Mac finished the food before she finished the letter, and while he waited he piled some loose blankets and pillows in the corner by the balcony. He brought over a lantern and a couple beers and set the food down for a sort of indoor picnic, eventually kicking out Dogmeat as the hound wouldn't stop whimpering and begging for food.

Finding furniture had gone by the wayside over the last few days as they diligently worked on the teleporter, but considering they spent much of their time sleeping and eating in strange, dangerous places all over the Commonwealth, having to eat a delicious candle lit dinner of barbecued radstag on the floor still didn't seem like such a bad deal.

"Are we ever going to share this with the others?" he asked as she sat down across from him and they dug into the food. She said nothing, but just shook her head very slowly. "Fair enough," he responded.

They ate quickly, all the physical labor they'd endured over the last few days had turned their appetites even more ravenous than usual… and the barbecue was just so damn good. The additional garlic powder she'd added this time was definitely a boon; she was still getting used to how much more of the herbs she needed to get the flavor she expected. Apparently two hundred years had caused them to lose some potency.

Their discussion meandered from talking about which of the settlers they thought were secretly hooking up, to Mac wondering where in the country she thought the bombs may not have hit as bad, to where the best place would be to set up feed troughs for the brahmin. They finally landed on how she thought, considering Mac's miscreant past, it was strange he still didn't know how to pick a lock.

"I can teach you, you know," she suggested.

"I know, I know. I just figure - if you already know how, why do I need to?"

"I may not always be around to pick your locks for you, Mac," she said with a grin.

"You fu-… you better be," he said, finishing up his meal and wiping his hands clean.

"Come on, you're the one that's all hell bent on keeping the score even. You taught me to shoot, I'll teach you to pick a lock," she argued, clearing their plates back to the kitchen then rejoining him on the blanket.

"Fine," he said, "You can show me the ropes next time we're out." He popped the cap off a beer with his knife and passed it to her, then took a drink from his own. "How do you even know how to pick a lock, anyway?"

"I may have gone through a rebellious phase when I was a teenager," she said, taking a drink.

"You?" he said, with feigned shock. "I'd be more surprised to hear you were ever _not_ rebellious."

"I was very wholesome back in the day, actually," she said haughtily. "But it was typical for teenagers to go through a period of rebellion, it was like a right of passage."

"Ugh, some greasy guy with some ridiculous name and a leather jacket taught you, right? And then you made out in the back of his soft top convertible?"

" _Soft top_?" she said, doing her best to feign indignation, "He had a _motorcycle_ , thank you very much."

"Gross."

"Jimmy 'Two-Pins', he was called," she said dreamily and Mac almost spit out the drink he'd just taken.

"You're making that up," he coughed.

"Hey, you're the one jumping to conclusions about random high school boyfriends. My _friend_ taught me, if you must know… her name was Carolyn Marsh."

"Oh, _that_ kind of rebellious phase! Ok, this officially just got interesting," he said with a grin, leaning forward as if she was about to dive into the details of some scandalous love affair.

"Ugh, Robert MacCready, you're such a boy," she said remonstratively.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise, "Robert?"

"Rob, Robbie? What do you prefer?" she quipped, "Robert Joseph? Joe? RJ?"

He locked his eyes on her and set his jaw. He put down his beer and leaned forward to start crawling toward her, then in a low, deliberate tone he demanded, "How… do you even… know… my middle… name?"

"Daisy told me," she said innocently, tucking her knees tighter toward her chest. His endearing, yet… threatening… crawl toward her was making her heart race.

"Oh, Daisy told you," he said, "You guys best friends now?"

"Maybe," she said with a small shrug, tilting her head down a bit so she could look back at him unassumingly, "I don't have a lot of lady friends these days."

"What about Preston?" he asked as he drew nearer. She laughed, but he gave her a look that said a lot, something like… _If you don't tell me Preston is your lady friend, I'm going to have to go prove my masculinity by punching him in the face or something equally as dramatic and manly, even though I don't want to because I actually kind of like him._

She relented as he drew closer, "Preston and I have been known to gab, yes."

"Gab?" he said, his face mere inches away from hers, "That's some serious 2070s terminology."

"What can I say, I'm a 2070s kinda girl," she smiled. Their conversation had become completely pointless and they knew it, every word an excuse to draw out the tension he was creating by stalking toward her with that wolfish grin.

She felt a little disappointed as his mischievous look suddenly faded in favor of deadly seriousness. And then he said the last thing she ever expected him to say…


	31. You What Me?

…"I love you."

Her first instinct was to ask him to repeat himself. Like that involuntary reaction you have when you know you heard what someone said, but you say 'What?' anyway, just to give yourself more time to process it.

She hoped she hadn't been gaping at him too long before her response began. She rested a hand lightly on the side of his face, studying the lines of his brow, the shape of his eyes, the week's worth of stubble he hadn't had a chance to shave off yet…

"I love you," she said. It hadn't sounded like a reply, but… she hadn't wanted it to. Her sentiment stood on its own. She didn't want him to see it as an obligatory response, as if she'd only said it because he'd said it.

He kissed her in a new way… in a slow, delicate, acute way that despite appearing modest on the outside, made her feel like she'd been hit by a truck. But a wonderful, warm, strong, rustic truck that threaded itself through her and made her forget to breathe or think or do anything other than exist in that one moment for as long as it could possibly last. Her head spun a little… and she knew it was from the kiss because she'd only had half a beer and because of the way her pulse raced and her palms sweat and her heart beat hard against her rib cage like it was trying to escape.

She knew it'd been a long time since she'd first felt this way about someone, but she didn't remember it feeling like this. The same butterflies, maybe… the same yearning, to never want to be so far you couldn't reach out and touch them, to desire their happiness at the expense of your own, and of everyone around you, because you just can't shake the feeling that they're more important than everyone else, and it's too bad because those other people are probably nice enough, but sadly… they just don't matter as much. It was all of those things, but somehow more. This almost… hurt.

What was different? Was the love she felt for him somehow more or less than what she'd experienced before? Or was it this world again, the circumstances that were forced on her? Here, the threat of death was constant and inevitable, so loving someone in this world was dangerous. Not only because of how heartbroken you'd be if you lost them, but because of how the love would affect you. Your reactions in battle would change, your priorities would shift… you might lose some sense of your own preservation at the expense of insuring theirs. She'd proven she was capable of that when she'd threatened her own life to the courser… her hand had been forced, but she was ready to give up everything to save him.

That's what this hurt was, then… dread… because she couldn't love him like that yet… not like she wanted to, like she needed to. If she let herself love MacCready to the point she knew was possible, he'd have to either be completely safe or she'd have to be able to leap in after him… and she couldn't do that until she'd rescued her son.

In proper Mac fashion, he stopped kissing her as if he could sense her trepidation, sweeping some hair out of her face and looking at her patiently. That look… damn. He was ready to love her to the ends of the earth, and there she was, teetering on the edge of it, but she had to stop herself, she had to stop them both before there was no going back. She didn't know if she had the courage…

He looked at her with a soft, dreamy look in his eye, like he'd already dove in and was letting her know it was safe, the water's just fine, but she just had to stand there on the edge of the cliff overlooking the water and gape down at him and consider what might lurk beneath the dark pristine surface, what kind of terror might steal him from her and what kind of hell she'd rain down if she had to avenge his loss.

"I'm ready to be all in, you know I am," she said quietly, "But I owe it to Shaun. If I let myself love you like I want to, I might hesitate… I have to be ready to give my life to save him."

He was quiet for a long time but didn't take his eyes off of her. He studied her face in the flickering lantern light, and she looked him in the eye, waiting for any indication of what he was thinking. His eyes were this perfect shade of gunmetal blue…

Ugh, what was she doing? How could she tell someone she'd effortlessly die for that he'd have to wait for a hundred percent, just in case she got herself killed? How could she ask something like that from someone she loved? As if it wouldn't already be the end of the world if she lost him.

"I know," he said softly.

Of course he'd say that.

"I told you I was willing to wait as long as it takes," he continued seriously, "My patience knows no bounds when it comes to you."

"It really doesn't…" she said with amazement, tracing her fingers along his jaw and studying him with what she knew was a disbelieving look.

"It makes it easier," he smiled, "To hear you say it."

She grinned back at him, then said coyly, "Oh, say what? That I might get killed?"

"Nope, you love me and you know it," he said with feigned petulance, burying his head in her neck playfully, "No take backsies!"

She laughed, "Excellent use of pre-war trivia, bonus points." He adjusted his position in a way she'd begun to recognize as preparation for tickling. She stuck her hands into her armpits to try and shield them, but his grip was too strong as he peeled them away and began his assault.

He got her hands pinned down with one of his so he could tickle her relentlessly with the other and she could almost not breathe through all the giggling. She feigned injury long enough to catch him off guard and flip over onto him. She was surprised that she was able to keep him pinned down for a few long moments, though by the pleased grin on his face, she was fairly certain he was just letting it happen… and enjoying it thoroughly.

He sat up, easily escaping her grip so he could scoop her into his arms as she continued to straddle him. He pulled her into a deep kiss, and she found herself tossing his hat aside so she could run her fingers through his hair.

Suddenly, a nearby explosion rocked them enough that she lost her balance and rolled onto the blanket next to him. They both sat up, then froze, waiting to hear more precisely where the commotion was coming from.

"Mutant suiciders!" someone outside yelled.

"Son of a - "


	32. Super F-ing Mutants

Apparently finding somewhere safe wasn't going to prevent them from getting ambushed by super mutants within minutes of laying hands on one another. It had just crossed the line into absurd, and she'd had just about enough of it. She pulled herself up off the ground and marched toward her weapons cabinet. She had one thing here in Sanctuary that she never had when they were out in the world… her quad barrel missile launcher.

"Careful there, you could do more damage than good with that thing," MacCready warned.

"You don't think I learned all about how to use one of these in college?" she asked, and by his blank reaction she assumed he really didn't know that was an absurd statement. "It's ok," she said as she loaded the missiles, "Codsworth taught me how to use it."

"Oh…" he said distantly as she marched back toward the balcony, "…great."

She approached the railing, looking out over the river and valley beyond. It was a clear night, so visibility was decent and she could spot half a dozen settlers taking cover behind the guard towers along the river. The automated turrets reigned a steady stream of bullets down on the super mutants as they trudged through the water toward them. They'd set a good amount of traps on the opposite bank, explosives that would easily take out three or four raiders each. However they would only eliminate one of these enormous beats, maybe injuring one or two others with each blast. It was going to be crucial to get as many of them down as they could before they got into close quarters.

"Hook me up with some support," she said.

"What, why?" he asked.

"I don't know the math, but apparently I weigh less than the amount of force four simultaneous missile launches produce," she said. "Or so Codsworth explained, _after_ I slid a half dozen yards backward across the pavement."

"Je- … really, Cryo? Do you really think you should be firing that if it knocked you off your da- … your feet the last time you used it?"

A nearby explosion rocked them both, so he relented and crossed over toward her. She looked down to find her target while Mac hemmed and hawed about the best way to lend the needed support. He finally decided that standing back-to-back with his elbows hooked into her arms would be the best.

"I feel like I'm just going to flatten you," she warned as another explosion went off nearby.

"I can think of worse ways to go," he announced, spreading his stance out wide and bending his knees. "Let's do it, boss."

She aimed, fired, and if she hadn't let go of the weapon and instinctively ducked, dragging Mac down with her, she was pretty certain they would have broke each other's backs by trying to stop the momentum themselves. The weapon flew across the room, crashing into the kitchen counter and causing a sack of tatos to roll out over the floor.

"How did that even happen?" he gaped as they untangled themselves from one another. She could only shake her head and rub her now very sore shoulder. She stood to take note of the massive destruction she'd just managed to cause across the river in the form of a pile of no less than six super mutant corpses. Worth it.

"I'm out of missiles," she said. "Stay here and get those suiciders down, they could burn this whole place to the ground," she instructed, though he was steps ahead of her as he'd already grabbed his rifle and knelt at the railing of the balcony.

"Stay safe," he called after her as she ran toward the door, grabbing her laser rifle on the way out.

Outside, the place was in chaos… at least four fires burnt from incoming explosions, and some of the newer settlers that lacked combat experience were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. She made a mental note to start implementing mandatory raider, mutant and ghoul specific emergency drills at settlements over a certain population.

"Get inside!" she yelled at them over the din of gunfire, ushering them away from the riverside building and deeper into the settlement toward the houses. She spotted Preston on the top of a tall guard tower, unloading his laser turret into the mutants' front line and yelling instructions at other minutemen. She began to load her rifle as she ran toward him when she was suddenly bowled over by something… yep, a super mutant.

"Son of a - " she started, then she heard the too familiar, soul destroying beeping of an armed mini Nuke. She flipped over to fight the mutant off, flicking the arming switch on the bomb just as the beast's head whipped back and it fell to the side, dead.

The panic caused by being one of the pieces of a mutant/mini nuke sandwich forced her to remain lying on the ground for a few long moments while her stomach crawled its way back down her throat. Mac appeared, pulling her up off the ground and grabbing the sides of her face to look her in the eye as another nearby explosion went off.

"You ok?" he demanded.

"Fine!" she called over the uproar. They grabbed each other and ducked down as another grenade went off less than three yards away. She couldn't see Preston anymore through the smoke that surrounded them. She stood back up, grabbing Mac by the hand and dashing in the direction she thought was the guard post… nope, wrong way.

She turned back around just as an explosion went off where they'd been moments earlier. How many grenades did these damn mutants have? She pulled Mac back the way they came from, the smoke continuing to disorient them.

"I'll take that," she announced obstinately as they passed back by the dead mutant suicider, reaching down and ripping the bomb out of its stiffened grasp. They kept running past it, this time in the right direction, to the guard tower she'd seen Preston at. He was still there, ducking below the railing and reloading his weapon.

"General, you're safe, good," Preston said with labored breaths. She pressed herself against the railing next to him, setting the mini nuke aside and pulling her gun over her shoulder to load it. Mac crouched on the other side of her, bringing his rifle up onto the ledge for support, then started shooting.

"We're not prepared for this," she said to Preston, trying to slow her heart rate to something more manageable. A firefight was nothing out of the ordinary, but being so close to that mini nuke had set her on edge.

"I know," he said regretfully, turning back around to keep shooting. She finished loading as well and set her gun up on the railing to peer through the scope. There was so much haze and smoke, her night vision scope was literally useless. She had no idea how Mac and Preston were finding things to shoot at. She listened for a few long moments, finally hearing the disturbing, gleeful laughter of a mutant as it rained hell down on some pour soul down the hill. She aimed her gun in its general direction, noted a vague shape through the smoke of a wide, green-tinged girth, then fired at it until her cell ran out.

"General!" a minuteman appeared behind the guard tower, climbing half the stairs and crouching to talk to her. "We've got six out on scouting patrol to the west right now, should I send word to bring them back?"

"Do it," she agreed, loading another cell into her weapon, then as he turned to go she clarified, "Send Jun or Marcy though - someone that can't fight."

"Yes ma'am," he agreed, then ran off. She audibly groaned. Had she aged so much in the last few months that she now looked like a ma'am to everyone?

She just finished loading as a nearby grenade managed to knock all three of them to the ground, despite being crouched on their knees already. She pulled herself back up, noting that both Mac and Preston made motions to reset themselves as well. She'd hit her head on something, and she wiped at her forehead with the back of her hand as blood ran into her eye. The boys started firing again as she looked out to survey the main battlefield.

The two guard towers she could see from this vantage point were still standing, but the pairs of turrets flanking both had been completely smashed. The newer turrets that sat high on the roof of the riverside structure were still panging out laser fire toward the mutants as they rampaged up the hill, but it seemed nothing but an annoyance to the creatures. She continued firing at the beasts, taking her time to execute well-placed headshots, as she knew it was a better approach to thin the ranks than to merely slow them down with injuries. They… just… kept… coming…

Another nearby explosion knocked them to their feet again and was followed up by a flurry of bullets that could have only originated from a minion. They ducked deeper into cover, but she heard Preston growl in pain. She turned to find him holding his wounded arm as it bled out onto his jacket. Of course she didn't have any stimpacks on her. There was supposed to be a supply at each guard station, but she didn't see a med kit anywhere, and not another minuteman or settler was in sight.

This was starting to get bad… really, really bad.


	33. Battle for Sanctuary

"RJ! On your six!" she called as she spotted a super mutant that had somehow managed to flank them and was plowing toward MacCready brandishing a… Revolutionary War style sword? What the hell?

"RJ? Fu- …hel-… _no way_!" Mac managed to yell over the commotion as he turned and shot the beast in the face before it could reach the stairs. She turned back to attending to Preston, tying a tourniquet on his bloodied, broken arm so he at least wouldn't bleed out before they could get their hands on some stimpacks. The three took cover again as a notable style of explosion rocked them… blinding light, deafening sound, the feeling as if time had slowed… nuclear.

"More suiciders?" Preston said with a disbelieving grimace. Usually by this stage of a fight they had accomplished their task, or had been taken out. After one, two, _three_ more explosions however, some even seeming to come from across the river, they exchanged worried glances as they realized that this had to be something other than mutant suiciders.

Then she heard the thick, meaty chopping sounds at the same time she felt the pulsating bursts of wind pounding against her skin. She looked up to the sky… vertibirds. The smoke and haze began to clear as the propellers cycled the air around and she could finally get a semi-clear view of what was going on. Three vertibirds were cycling around Sanctuary, their miniguns unloading as their spotlights accented the packs of super mutants surrounding the town. Knights in full suits of power armor began to fall from the sky, landing amongst the settlers with resounding thuds.

"Shit's getting real now," MacCready said with a delighted grin, then he turned back to keep sniping at the mutants running up the hill. She looked down at her newly acquired nuclear device. What better time than the present?

"Guys, this is happening," she said to Mac and Preston as she lifted the nuke. They both crouched deeper into cover behind the railing as she knelt forward to peek over.

"Fire in the hole!" she yelled as loudly as she could manage. Though most of the settlers and minutemen remaining on the hill turned to flee, she could still spot one rushing forward to get a better shot on a pack of five super mutants as they rushed through the water. She apparently needed to clarify.

"NUCLEAR fire in the hole!" she yelled again, and she swore she could hear Mac laughing over the din but couldn't afford to check. The remaining minuteman scrambled back up the hill toward them so she armed the bomb, got a small running start, and chucked it down the hill. It bounced… once, twice, three times and right into the chest of the beast at the forefront of the pack. She wasn't sure why she felt the need to just stand there and watch where it landed - like there was anything she could do about it after the fact, but thankfully Mac reached up and pulled her down into cover just the explosion shook the entire hill.

"Damn… good aim, General," Preston said, holding his wounded arm and peaking up over the railing to take note of the destruction. Suddenly the ground near them shook with the dramatic entrance of another Knight dropping from a vertibird.

"Knight - do you have any stims?" she called over the commotion. The armor whirled as the knight spun around to face her, flicking a switch on his flank to reveal a compartment full of stimpacks. She grabbed a handful, thanked the knight, then turned and started injecting them into Preston's arm.

"Thanks General," he said.

"Stay here - we got this," she instructed, then motioned to MacCready to follow as they snuck down off the guard tower to start creeping forward down the hill. They picked off the remaining mutants, though the Brotherhood's coordinated decimation hadn't left many to contend with. After only a handful of minutes the noises of the firefight had come to a halt and though a haze lingered from the remaining fires, the smoke that had cloaked most of the fight was now gone.

They headed back up the hill and reconvened with Preston as he finished up a headcount of the settlers and minutemen. Mac had pulled a handkerchief out of God only knows where and started dabbing at the blood that was still running down her forehead.

"We lucked out, General," Preston announced, wiping sweat from his face. "We only lost three, somehow."

"Three," she said with a sigh. Even though a loss of so few was a downright miracle, it was still hard to learn that some of them were gone. "I'm not sure the same can be said for the state of the settlement, however," she pointed out, giving a sweeping glance around at all the fires that were still burning, though settlers, minutemen and Brotherhood knights alike were busy running about with pales of water. Though the current effort seemed successful, she made a mental note to also implement fire drills…

"I know," Preston said, surveying the damage, "But it could have been so much worse. The Brotherhood really saved our asses on this one."

She looked out across the river where one of the vertibirds had landed, the other two still circling diligently around the town, likely checking for stragglers. She saw a familiar set of power armor climbing out from behind the minigun of the landed aircraft.

"Make sure the injured get whatever they need - there's a stash of stimpacks up in my room if you need more than what's in the storage shed," she instructed to Preston, who nodded and turned to delegate to pair of minutemen nearby. Mac followed as she trudged down the hill and across the river toward the landed vertibird.

"Danse… Jesus - " she said, approaching the paladin as he took his helmet off. "Thank you - how did you know we were under attack?"

"We've been tracking this pack for days, they've been hunting for somewhere new to hole up since we flushed out their lair last week. I got word this afternoon from Knight Harding that they'd decided to head west. I thought it was pretty likely they'd run into you guys."

"Well, thanks, you seriously saved our as- … butts… behinds?" she said, turning to look at MacCready questioningly. He just giggled lightly.

"No thanks required, soldier," Danse replied in that stoic demeanor of his, though she swore she could see just the smallest hint of a smile pulling at his lips. Why couldn't he just admit when he found something funny? "I tried to warn you, but… you don't seem to pay much attention to your radio."

"Shi-… yeah, sorry," she shook her head with disgust at herself.

"Stay safe up here," he said, then turned to head back toward the vertibird, calling back at her, "Maybe turn your radio on!"

"Danse!" MacCready suddenly called after the paladin, jogging a few paces to catch up with him. Danse turned and looked at him, then exchanged a surprised glance with her, as shocked as she was that Mac was interacting with him solo. "Thanks… for the letter thing, I mean," he said with a strange mix of reservation and sincerity, "I really appreciate it."

"You're welcome, Recruit," Danse said with an _actual_ freaking smile, patting Mac on the shoulder roughly with one giant power armored hand, then turning to stomp back toward the vertibird.

"No…" Mac squeaked, then turned to look at her for help, "Recruit? No…"

She laughed, "Don't worry, I'm pretty sure that's Danse's way of making a joke."

"You're _pretty_ sure?" he asked, his voice breaking, looking up as the vertibird's propellers started to spin up.

"Actually, I'm very sure. Technically there's no actual recruit rank - it starts at Initiate," she said.

"He can't even bring himself to misuse the ranks as a joke?" Mac asked with disbelief as the aircraft lifted off and headed east. "Man, that guy needs to get some."

She laughed, then added, "Danse is intense, but he's harmless. He's not going to force you into the Brotherhood, don't worry."

"But you'd protect me from him, right?" he said with a grin, turning and wrapping his arms around her.

"He's my superior officer… so no-can-do. But once you're drafted, I bet they'd let us share a bunk," she said hearteningly.

"That sounds like it'd be _so_ against regulations," he said, then kissed her. He let her head rest against his chest and they stood in the embrace for a few long minutes as the remaining vertibirds landed to the south so their knights could load back in.

"Hey, Cryo?" he said after a long time.

"Yeah, Mac."

"Still love me?" he asked, as if she might have changed her opinion over the last hour.

"Still love you," she replied.


	34. Diving In

Despite having to reallocate some workers to repair the damage from the super mutant raid, they still managed to finish the teleporter project in under three weeks, a full three days earlier than they had anticipated. It caught her a bit off guard.

She didn't have any reason to require a certain departure date, but she suddenly felt… not ready. She'd gotten used to what it felt like to have to just keep waiting. And the better things got between her and MacCready, and the more Sanctuary began to feel like home again, though a very, very different home, the harder it was to imagine dematerializing all her cells so they could _maybe_ re-materialize inside a secret underground bunker full of humanoid robots and a handful of mad scientists…

Only her and Sturges were there as they put the final touches on the machine and connected the power lines. He gave her a holotape and instructed her on how to use it to download data from the Institute's mainframe. If she came back in one piece, he could decrypt it and they could pick through it for clues about what the Institute was up to. She gave the mechanic a much deserved hug, then left to find MacCready.

She found him on the boardwalk overlooking the river, leaning on the railing and sipping a beer as a rad storm rolled toward them from the southeast and the sun set behind him. It had been a dry, warm three weeks, so he'd hung up his duster and now wore only a t-shirt and pants, his suspenders hanging loose down around his legs. His stubble had grown out into a short, full beard and his skin had darkened a few shades from so many weeks of working outside in the sun every day. His hair was flattened and rumpled from his hat, which was now folded and stuck in the back of his pants. Though he was sweaty, and just a little dirty, for some reason she found the whole look pretty irresistible.

"It's ready," she said with a solid mix of trepidation and excitement. He turned around to look at her, more surprised than she thought he'd be. "With the rad storm moving in, we'll wait, but… I'll go in the morning," she clarified.

"Ok…" he replied, a nervous edge to his voice, "Can we talk before you go?"

"Of course," she said with concern, unsure what he wanted to discuss. She followed him as he led her up the stairs to their room.

"I lied," he said as he shut the door slowly.

"Lied? About what?" she asked, somewhat unsettled. He shook his head as he turned around to face her.

"I don't want to talk," he said, then stepped forward and seized her in his arms. Just when she thought she knew what it was going to feel like when Mac went to kiss her, he surprised her with yet another variation. There were few words to adequately describe this one… other than that it _required_ her. It didn't take long for him to shift his attention from her lips to her jawline… to her earlobe… to her neck…

"What about super mutants?" she asked breathily.

"It's ok, I surrounded the entire building with land mines," he said softly and she was only briefly concerned that he might not be kidding before becoming utterly preoccupied by the way he effortlessly laid her down on the bed. And just like that, she was lost.

She could think of nothing but the electrified way her skin felt against his and how his weight and warmth felt as he pressed himself against her. Her hands had minds of their own, running through his hair, down his back, along his shoulders and neck as his lean, firm muscles flexed and he wrapped his arms tighter around her.

And it was quickly heading places it never had before, but he didn't rush… every kiss had purpose, every touch was vindicated and every motion had intent. He broke away from her lips to lay waste to her neck line in such a way that she became briefly light headed as chills ran down her spine and the burning sensation deep within her flared even hotter.

When she felt like she could finally breathe again in the wake of his diligence, she became consumed with the question of why his damn shirt was still in her way. She quickly pulled it off him and tossed it into the nether, because nothing existed outside this three by six foot mattress. The bare skin of his chest was hot and damp and she _had_ to be closer to it, so while he tried to kill her by running his tongue along the ridge of her collar bone, her fingers found the edges of his muscles as they wrapped from his back to his stomach, chest, shoulders. She didn't have long to explore before he started questioning her own state of dress.

He pressed his lips against hers again, their mouths opening to find each other's tongues while he fumbled with the buttons on her shirt. She finally just ripped the shirt open herself so she could go back to focusing on how he felt as he pressed against her and the heat of his breath on her neck and the rough scratch of his beard as he bit at the tender skin behind her ear.

His hands found her newly exposed bare waist, causing more chills as his calloused fingers ran across her hip and to the small of her back, then up between her shoulder blades. He released the clasp on her bra with such ease that she felt momentarily jealous of whoever he'd honed that skill on.

She realized that thus far it felt like it was happening _to_ her, which caused her to become overwhelmed with the desire to ratify his declaration with one of her own. So she pressed him away just far enough that she could flip over on top of him, straddling his waist as she discarded her loosened clothing the rest of the way. He wrapped his hands around her waist, and though he was clearly enjoying the view, it was too much to be so far from each other so he rose up to meet her, running his fingernails up her now bare back as he engulfed her in his arms and swept her underneath him again.

He paused then, looking her in the eye in a fierce, dedicated way and she immediately knew what he was thinking. Was this ok? Were they going too far? Did he have her permission to continue to ravage her, though by the intense gleam in his eye, she wasn't sure he had any true intention of stopping. And maybe it was a terrible, foolish idea, maybe neither of them were really ready, but all she could think was… _Hell, add it to the list of things we probably should not have done and move on, because clearly, this is happening._ She very well might die tomorrow, and if this was it, their last moments together, how could they not spend them getting to know every single inch of one another?

So she did her best to emulate the kiss he'd given her a few weeks ago, after he told her he loved her. Precise and delicate, but fierce and consuming. What better way to show consent? Her version however, had come out more of a demand. The intense kiss caused them to slow things down a bit, taking their time as they learned how to move together, how to incite one another, how to give and take the control.

And that was it, there was no going back. She let go of any tiny amount of her heart she'd withheld over the last three weeks in a vain effort to shield herself from the pain of loving someone quite possibly too much. She'd finally stepped up to the edge and dived right in to join him, the water was warm and inviting and she knew she would effortlessly slay anything that lurked beneath the surface because now she had no choice but to follow him to the ends of the earth, and whatever might lie beyond.

They woke in the morning with their foreheads pressed together, their arms and legs intertwined and a heavy weight bearing down on their hearts because they knew what she had to do that day.

"Maybe if we press together _really_ close… it will transport both of us?" he suggested.

"You heard what Sturges said… and Virgil, and the Railroad. One person, one trip," she said, "We can't risk it."

"Are we not one person?" he asked endearingly, caressing her cheek with his hand. She kissed his palm as it grazed her lips, trying not to show her own dread at the idea of not having him by her side. "What if it dematerializes you and just… never re-materializes you?" he asked quietly.

She smiled hearteningly, "Then I'll see you on the other side?"

"There's no other side for me, love."

She shook her head, "I think you're wrong about that." He gave her a nervous half smile, like he appreciated the sentiment but she was being too generous. "Plus," she continued lightheartedly, "If this world is any indication, we'd be _awesome_ at Hell. Like, we'd have that place whipped into shape in a handful of months."

He laughed at that. But too quickly she was up and dressed and armed, standing next to the machine just as Sturges had finished flipping the switch to bring the whole thing online. It spun and crackled, and she could feel the electricity literally charging the air around her as it sent shivers down her spine and crawling across her skin and down her arm and into her and Mac's entwined hands. They turned to look at each other, and she'd expected him to look nervous or maybe even fearful, but he looked as confident as ever, even affording her a smile.

"You got this, boss," he said. They both looked up as the machine lurched and spun faster, spitting out violent bursts of electricity.

"It's time!" Sturges yelled over the din. Her heart was beating faster than it ever had, and she was certainly more nervous than she'd ever been about what was to come. After everything she'd gone through so far to find Shaun… now wasn't the time to get gun-shy.

She looked back at MacCready and he kissed her, then said fiercely, "I love you. Don't. Die."

And she stepped onto the platform…


	35. Aftermath

In a blinding, violent storm of white hot lightning, she was back in Sanctuary, standing on the pavement next to the big tree at the end of the cul-de-sac, not a soul in sight. She'd been gone… less than eight hours, it was now late afternoon. She could feel every cell in her body buzzing, like they'd been vibrating for eternity and now they'd finally stopped, but the phantom feeling remained. Nothing happened for a few long moments, so she sat herself down on the pavement and waited quietly.

She didn't know how long she'd been there before MacCready found her. He sat down on the ground in front of her and took her hands in his. She kicked into auto-pilot as she calmly divulged to him the cold facts of what she'd discovered while inside the Institute. Any outward calm he'd manifested upon her departure slowly faded away, and she was finding it a little difficult to handle his sympathetic grimace, so she stopped talking and tucked her knees up to her chest and laid her head down on them. He told her to stay put, he was going to bring her something to eat.

She couldn't stop coming up with things that were horrifying about the situation.

She'd missed her child's whole life.  
Someone else had raised him, and not a woman or a man, or even Kellogg… but an institution… scientists?  
Her son was almost three times her own age.  
He'd created a synth of himself as a child… to see how she'd react? To study her?  
She couldn't even recognize him. And not because of his age… because damn, he looked just like her father-in-law… but because some strange set of circumstances, some altered reality, had warped him into a man she never would have raised.  
Her own son scared her.

And why now? Did her pod simply malfunction or did he play some role in her release? If he knew his mother was alive, why wait until now to free her? Why stand aside and watch her throw herself into danger after danger trying to find him? Why all the cloak and daggers?

She just couldn't shake the feeling of guilt - like this was all her fault somehow. What if she'd just said no to that Vault-Tec rep that wouldn't stop badgering them? What if she'd agreed, months before that, when her husband suggested they move to the Midwest? What if… she was the one holding Shaun that day instead of him?

She couldn't even pretend like she had a clue as to how her husband would have handled all this if he had been the 'backup' instead of her. She felt certain that, in the beginning, he'd have reacted much the same… willing to do anything to find and protect Shaun. But after the revelations of the last eight hours… she honestly couldn't say what he would do.

Maybe hers was a different purpose than she'd originally thought. Instead of crossing centuries so she could save her son… maybe she was actually here to save everyone else _from_ her son. Was it that cut and dry? Her genes, her problem? Should she have just teleported in and grabbed him by the ear to sit him down and calmly suggest that maybe it's a bad idea to replace real people with synthetic versions just to sit back and see what happens?

The worst part was that she didn't even know the whole story. She could tell just by looking in his eyes how much he was holding back… she was just beginning to scratch the surface of whatever they were up to. She couldn't exactly blame him for withholding, they were kin but they didn't know each other. And from an outside perspective, some of her actions over the last nine months could be seen as… unstable, she supposed.

She couldn't wait for Mac to return, so instead she did what she was good at, which which was getting drunk and planning something stupid. This time it was half a bottle of whisky on an empty stomach and packing a bunch of explosives into a bag so she could head to the Corvega Assembly Plant to put down those damn raiders once and for all… and she had enough firepower to decimate everything else between here and there and back again, if necessary.

But instead of Nick finding her just before it was too late, this time it was MacCready scooping her up and telling her there was an alcohol threshold after which one should not use a bottle cap mine, so she obstinately told him she'd use the pulse mines instead. And though she felt adamant about not giving up on her plan, his suggestion of lying down, just for a while, did sound like a good idea. Her head was swimming after all and a short nap might help…

But when she woke in the morning with her forehead pressed to his and she saw the innocence of his undisturbed sleep, razing the countryside was the very last thing she wanted to do. Instead she wanted to board up the doors and windows and hide in her room with him forever and not worry about a single thing outside those walls because… could anything possibly matter more than this man? She was going to start needing some damn good reasons to bother with anything else.

"What are you thinking?" he asked quietly. He had opened his eyes and was looking at her now with that familiar unending patience, but he also looked pained because her hurt was his hurt. She could feel the bonds connecting them that forced the rationed emotion … and sharing it made it easier but she had to hate herself just a little bit for bringing him any degree of pain.

"Oh you know, heading west into the sunset… you, me and Dogmeat? Nick can come too if he wants. We can swing south and grab Duncan on the way," she said.

"You want to run away from it? That's not you," he said.

"And what am I exactly? Displaced in time, dead family, a son who… I don't even know."

"You're resourceful," he said, as if he already had a list prepared. "You're driven. You're a da- …darn… good leader. All these people, do you have any idea how much they look up to you? You appear from a vault, take this world in stride and in your wake you resurrect the Minutemen, join the Brotherhood of Steel… in a very convenient, one-sided way… and within months manage to track down an adversary the entire Commonwealth has been trying to find for years. You're like their messiah."

"Are you really comparing me to Jesus?" she said dryly.

"Rising from the dead and performing miracles?" he smiled, then added seriously, "You know you still have reasons to stay here."

"I don't need to save him anymore though… I don't even think I can. All I've been the last nine months is Shaun's vengeful mother. I don't know what that makes me now."

"You're still a parent. Shaun's just… not who you thought he'd be."

She scoffed, "You mean over sixty years old and… possibly insane? He's the boogeyman of the Commonwealth… he's what everyone around us is afraid of, and rightfully so."

"You can't blame yourself for what they turned him into," he said.

"So what, you think I should give him a chance?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said, and he looked truly torn. "I can't say what's right, but I know that running away isn't the answer."

"I just… don't even know where to start."

"Just do what you do best," he replied.

"Kick down the door, guns blazing?"

He laughed, "No, although you do excel at that… I mean, just be who you are and the answer will present itself. Finding out all this… it's a lot to process. Take your time, let your brain… and your heart, work through it and you'll know what to do."

"You're right," she sighed, "It's just… overwhelming. For every question I got answered, a hundred more sprung up in it's place."

"Question hydra," he said offhandedly and she couldn't stop herself from laughing.

"There it is," he said, welcoming the return of her smile and smoothing her hair out of her face. "Those raiders should send me a gift basket. You were totally going to kill the sh- … crap… out of them last night."

"I really was… but I was probably also going to take myself out in the process. Thanks for diffusing me, Mac," she said. "I owe you one."

"I'm sure it won't be long before I find an edge I'm dying to leap off," he said, "We can keep each other in check."


	36. Just a Quarry

MacCready was apparently not kidding when he said he was bound to find a cliff to try and leap from. She just didn't think it'd be so… literal.

"It's just a quarry, Mac," she whispered as she followed him, sneaking along the edge of the cliff overlooking the Dunwich Borers quarry. They'd stumbled upon it while making their way east toward the coast to clear out a new settlement. It was totally overrun by raiders, but for some reason Mac was captivated by the place.

"What happened to tempering ourselves?" she pointed out with some concern as she spotted a raider in a full suit of power armor… and what might have been a missile launcher.

"That was before, you have nothing to live for now, remember?" he said and she glared at him.

Mac's current approach to her moodiness about Shaun was to play devil's advocate, and it made her want to strangle him… and not in the sexy kind of way. It had been a week since she returned from the Institute and he'd been his patient, dedicated self, more or less. This current approach wasn't impatience so much as him trying to shock some kind of decision out of her, for her own sake. Every brainstorm she had on the matter, either out loud or internal, resulted in a spiraling, pointless downdraft of 'what ifs' and guilt-trips. Unfortunately, the decision didn't seem to be getting any easier with time.

They stopped to survey the area, and she saw a heavy cable running across the span of the quarry just as Mac did. He turned and looked at her with wide eyes.

"Oh, hell no," she said remonstratively.

"Like you didn't have the same thought," he accused.

"Yep, thought was had, thought was dismissed. That quickly."

"Pull out that new semi-automatic and cover me while I slide across," he said.

"If you want to kill yourself, there are simpler ways," she replied.

"I don't know, this seems like a pretty badass way to go," he argued.

"I cannot even tell if you're kidding right now," she said with equal parts annoyance and disbelief.

"Of course I'm kidding," he said, but then added, "We'll kill the raiders, _then_ I'll slide across."

She couldn't respond before he'd ducked away to continue around to the other side of the crater where they'd gain some better cover to snipe from. After what felt like the longest afternoon of her life, they finally had every raider down except the one in power armor, who had run out of missiles and found his way up to their perch so he could pummel them face-to-face.

She dropped to the ground and let the raider bowl over her as he swung a giant, metal fist at her face. He fell clumsily to the ground behind her and Mac pulled the pin on a grenade, shoving it in the gap between the torso and leg pieces. She stood gaping at the raider as he tried to get back up, Mac knocking her to the ground and into cover behind a nearby rock just before the grenade went off, causing a blizzard of white, dusty smoke to explode out from the blast.

He stood, helping her up as well, then started to brush the white quarry dust off himself even as more of it continued to settle onto him.

"Are you crazy? Why didn't you take cover?" he asked.

"Sorry - that's just… such a good idea. Why didn't we think of that before?" she asked, still impressed by the ingenuity of lodging the explosive into the armor itself.

"Well, getting up close and personal with a suit of power armor isn't super high on our daily bucket lists," he explained, starting to brush the dirt off her as well.

"You're right… we need bucket lists," she said distantly.

"If we make them now, and I add 'slide across a three hundred foot crater on a cable', will you let me do it?" he asked. She didn't even bother to respond, just turning to head down the metal scaffolds and staircases that led to the interior portion of the quarry.

"Aren't bucket lists for old people?" he asked.

"We're kind of old people. We're at least, apparently, in charge," she said.

"That doesn't make us old, just unlucky," he said.

"Imagine if people with any sense of self-preservation actually decided to lead?" she said.

"I think that's precisely why they don't," he pointed out. She sighed resignedly.

"That may be true. To be fair we could just head straight to Salem and not stop to wipe out a quarry full of raiders for no good reason."

"I feel like you're judging me," he said with feigned indignation.

"I am. I'm judging this decision. Harshly," she replied.

"You said it was my turn to lead," he argued, "You needed a break, didn't want to deal with it anymore, blah, blah. This is me leading, deal with it."

"Fine, fine. It's not like I haven't led you into stupid places in the past."

"You'll be eating those words when we find some epic loot inside this quarry," he said smugly. In retrospect, she really did wish he had been right about that. But unfortunately, it wasn't _exactly_ what happened.


	37. Not Just a Quarry

They cleared a half dozen more raiders out from inside the quarry as they wound their way down deeper into the caves. They were far enough in that she was starting to feel a bit claustrophobic, even though the caverns were enormous. She was also partly concerned that they may not actually be able to find their way back out. After hacking and reading a third terminal chalk full of unsettling data entries from just before the bombs went off, she was feeling more and more like this was a bad idea.

Then she found an adorable bobblehead figure of a little blonde guy wearing a Vault-Tec suit, and she completely forgot about all the trepidation the place caused.

"Look how cute he is," she giggled, poking his head to make it sway, then reaching over Mac's shoulder to try and stick the guy in his bag.

"Hey, why are you giving me that crap?" he asked indignantly.

"You're such a whiner, Mac. Just take it," she said.

"I'm just saying, I'm a person, not a pack mule."

"Like you don't love being my safe deposit box."

MacCready burst out laughing at that, "What is that supposed to mean?"

"What? Safe deposit box?"

"I mean, I get it, it's an innuendo - "

"No - Jesus. Ugh, of course you'd think that."

"Safe deposit box?" he said with raised eyebrows, and she was surprised at how easy it was for him to make it sound dirty.

"Ok, that's fair," she agreed, pulling a bottle of whisky out of her bag and handing it to him. They'd taken to just carrying alcohol around with them everywhere now, as tallying up the drinks until they returned to Sanctuary was resulting in some seriously bad hangovers.

"So this was a real thing?" he asked, taking a drink and handing the bottle back to her.

"It was like an offsite safe, more or less. Banks offered them so you could store important documents, passports, stuff you didn't want your spouse to know about - whatever," she explained, then tried again to drop the figure into Mac's bag.

"You'll have to speak with an employee," he grinned.

She rolled her eyes at him, then sighed, "May I please speak with an associate regarding opening a safe deposit box with the Commonwealth Savings Bank of MacCready?" He just sat there and grinned like an idiot. Fine, she'd humor him. She sighed, "…if you know what I'm saying?"

He found that way, way too funny, but accepted the bobblehead and rewarded her with a kiss for playing along, although he just kept laughing through it. They wound their way down through the caverns a bit farther until they came upon a red metal doorway that blocked off the next section of the quarry. She pushed the door open.

There was a blinding flash of white light, and she was temporarily concerned that somehow the Institute was teleporting her back without her consent. When her eyes adjusted, however, she realized she was still in the quarry… but it was different. It was cleaner, brighter. It looked maintained. Were those guys up there running a forklift? She was just about to say something to them when she realized she had no idea where MacCready went.

"Mac!" she called out to him, and she knew she'd said something, but no sound came out. Her vision blurred and the white light engulfed her again. Her eyes adjusted and she was standing by Mac's side again. They'd pressed their backs against the wall, like some kind of defensive instinct, and their knuckles were white from the death grip they now held on each other's hands. They exchanged a slow, terrified expression that told her everything she needed to know - Mac had seen it too.

"What the fu-… damn hell was that?" MacCready asked. He'd forwent the harsher expletive, at least. She couldn't hold it against him though, this occasion justified some serious swearing. To be honest, she expected him to be totally over it the second weird, paranormal shit started happening. But he surprised her, yet again, by turning and giving her a nervous, though slightly excited, smile.

"Are we doing this, boss?" he asked expectantly. She was certain any sane person would have already ran for the exit. But sanity held no relevance with them.

"You're the boss now, kid," she said. "I'm just along for the ride."

"Kid? Come on now, that's not very sexy," he complained.

"What do you want, Don Juan?"

"Uh - " he said with a questioning grimace, like she'd just spouted something in an alien language.

She pulled the bottle of whisky out of her pack and handed it to him. He took the drink and passed it back to her, then she took one herself.

"For courage," she explained, then they headed through the doors and into the dark caverns beyond.

That's when things _really_ started spiraling out of control. There were feral ghouls everywhere, sure, and no matter how many times they flipped the power on, it still kept shutting itself back off. But what really proved they'd truly given up any pretense of sanity was when, after half a dozen more disturbing paranormal visions… they just kept plowing forward. It was like a mystery they couldn't _not_ solve. They had to see it through to it's end.

And just like that, she felt like she was drowning. Then she was being pulled by her collar out of a pool of water and thrown onto the floor as Mac let go and turned to shoot a feral ghoul in the face. From the corner of her eye she saw him continue to dispatch more ghouls as she flipped over onto all fours, coughing and hacking what felt like gallons of water up onto the dirt. Her head spun and her lungs and throat burned like they were on fire.

Then she saw her hand wrapped tightly around the hilt of… some kind of misshapen sword? She saw a ghoul slip past Mac and bumble toward her, so she rose to her knees and sliced it's head clean off at the neck with the blade. It's body crumpled to the ground, revealing a shocked MacCready behind it, still on his knees as well from having pulled her out of the drink. He gaped at her, and she gaped back as she continued to hold the sword in the air, eventually forcing her grip open to let the strange weapon fall to the ground.

"What. The. Fu-… Dammit, Cryo!" he growled.

"What? What the hell just happened?" she exclaimed.

"Are you being serious?" he asked, crawling toward her, eyeing the sword suspiciously as he closed in.

"I don't know what happened, Mac, I swear," she said, wiping her wet hair out of her face. He took her face in his hands and looked her in the eye, as if not entirely convinced she was herself. "The last thing I remember is seeing some kind of strange… cult ceremony thing…"

"Yeah…" he said. "And then you started rambling something in another language and before I could stop you, you'd ripped off all your armor and dove into that freaking pool!"

She took a look around and noted that her rifle, bag and various pieces of armor were all strewn about the small cavern. She continued to gape at MacCready with wide eyes for a few seconds then said, "…Oh…?"

She looked down at the sword, she could feel it… pulling at her, calling out to her. Mac saw her eyeing it and grabbed it, tossing it back into the pool and taking her by the hand so they could get out of there as quickly as possible. She felt an enormous sense of relief as the claustrophobic feeling was lifted and they walked out into the light as they exited the caverns. The pull from the evil weapon had dissipated, leaving her with a sinking feeling that maybe they should have found a way to dispose of it more permanently, like shooting it into space or tossing it into a fiery pit of lava.

"How is it light out?" MacCready asked. It was late afternoon when they went in a few hours ago, it should have been dark by now.

"Oh Jesus, Mac…" she said, looking at the clock on her Pip-Boy. It was almost nine in the morning... they'd been in that place for more than sixteen hours. "We lost some serious time…"

"It's tomorrow already?" he clarified, and she nodded slowly. They kept their hands locked together as they slowly turned their heads to look back at the door that led underground.

"If this experience has proven anything…" Mac said fatefully, "It's that I _definitely_ shouldn't be the one leading." She nodded her agreement and they quickly made their way toward the metal staircase that led out of the pit. After shaking off the violated and disturbed feelings from having been, apparently, possessed… she had one remaining thought. Life was short, so it was time she moved on with it.

"Let's skip the lighthouse," she said as they reached the top of the stairs.

"Yeah?" he asked.

"I think… I want to meet up with that courser. Help recover that rogue synth," she said, and he looked surprised and a little nervous. "I know… trust me, it's not because I'm ready to throw in with them, not at all. But the only way I'll find out more is if I earn his trust."

"You shouldn't have to earn anything from him," Mac said in a low, severe tone. He'd adopted a rather protective attitude when it came to her interactions with Shaun and the Institute.

"I know, but… it's just how the cards are laying out. I think we need to humor all this long enough to get our foot in the door."

"Well, in that case," he said, switching modes to display a charming grin, "You're welcome."

"Shut up, there's no way you knew this place would help me make a decision," she said, but she only half believed her own words. His reaction didn't illuminate the truth any, as he just gave her a smug smile and kept walking.


	38. Respite

A lot, and yet somehow very little, happened over the next few weeks. First, she and MacCready helped a courser find, deactivate and return a rogue synth to the Institute. And to be fair, the synth really was crazy and dangerous, but whether or not that was truly faulty programming or actually another purposeful experiment, she couldn't say. It pleased Shaun greatly for her to show her support, and that made her feel like a pretty terrible person, as she was still no where near ready to throw her hat in with them.

It accomplished some of what she'd hoped for however, as Shaun seemed to be trusting her more and more regarding the Institute, though he continued to withhold any information about his life, which was her true aim. He had another task for her, of similar but far more complicated origins. The Railroad had synths at Bunker Hill… he wanted to reclaim them… he wanted _her_ to reclaim them. She told him she'd help, but needed some time to get ready. That was, of course, bullshit. What she really needed was time to consider all the potentially monumental repercussions of the different approaches she could take.

Things had been calm after that while she and Mac enjoyed a brief respite in Sanctuary, one that didn't involve building an enormous teleportation device or going to full-scale battle with a huge pack of super mutants. They'd spent a lot of time in bed at first… like a lot, to the point that Preston actually thought they'd left town once before they resurfaced. Though they were enjoying the… 'socialization', they quickly realized they needed to be careful, as she could imagine nothing more terrifying than bringing a baby into this world. They managed to find plenty of ways to interface regardless, and between make-out sessions they found all kinds of other ways to entertain themselves around town.

They kept up with their settlement duties, spending a lot of time with the crops, the new brahmin, and training settlers on how to handle weapons, or at least how not to cause even more panic during emergencies. She'd started co-writing a story in the letters between her and Duncan, he'd write a couple paragraphs, then she'd pick up a few, and so on. It thus far had resulted in a pretty hilarious and wonderful plot. The kid was extremely smart and creative, and the more time she and MacCready spent analyzing old stories, the more she understood where Duncan got it from.

She and Mac took turns teaching each other games from their childhoods to pass the time. The activities they played at Little Lamplight, however, turned out to be mostly depressing or disturbing, like one where you'd put your open hand down on a table and other kids took bets on whether or not you could stab a knife quickly between all your fingers without looking. Or a version of hide and seek that allowed for low powered pulse mines. There was one normal one that involved one kid coming up with a sentence and whispering it to someone else, only once, quietly. It would continue like that until every kid in the settlement had passed it to someone new, before returning to the original person, who would announce what the sentence originally was, and what it had somehow become. MacCready was proud he could remembered one that wasn't disturbing in retrospect, so she didn't have the heart to tell him that it was a hold over from her time.

All she could think about after that was how unlikely it was that any single account in history had not become completely corrupted in its infinite retelling. Even in her own sharing of history with Mac and Duncan, she'd likely unconsciously warped the narrative due to the faulty nature of human memory. What kind of gloriously inaccurate retelling of her own story would hit the ears of some unsuspecting individual some day? How over or mis-sold was it already as her deeds became more known throughout the Commonwealth? She could only imagine the version of events Duncan would come up with, he had a tendency to apply grandeur and heroism to his recollection of just about _anything_ , but in particular the events she and Mac got up to. He was proud of the things his father did for him, however, so she would never have the heart to tell him how stupid and dangerous most of the incidents had been, nevertheless how close to death they may have come.

Over a couple long days they had completed one project that was probably the most important update to Sanctuary thus far… they'd built a bar. 'Bar' mostly meant a counter on one of the remaining open foundations, stacked with a couple coolers of alcohol, surrounded by an amalgamation of all the various stools, chairs, tables, sofas and patio furniture the Commonwealth had to offer. They'd scored some Christmas lights once from a Super Duper Mart, so they'd strung the colored and white strings of bulbs between poles and around the perimeter, and in the evening, at least, the place had some serious ambience. They had come up with a name… 'The Foundation'… which she and Mac giggled about a lot as they constructed and painted a sign to hang between two posts on either side of the steps that led up onto the concrete slab.

The hot temperatures hadn't relented, even though she knew it should be fall again soon. Seasons no longer held the same meaning as they did pre-war. In the hottest part of the day, they'd often take a dose of Rad-X and run around in the river to cool down. They spent two whole afternoons reconfiguring the old water pump to cycle water up to the boardwalk and shoot it back down into the river over a collection of inverted car body pieces, creating a strange but effective water slide.

At night they'd taken to climbing up onto the roof of their room and laying underneath the stars so she could tell him everything she could remember about astronomy, the constellations, even astrology. Though she explained that she'd never taken much stock in it herself, MacCready still gave her quite a bit of grief about the absurdity of divining meaning from the positions of astrological bodies. He still insisted she tell him everything she knew about his 'sign' and her own.

Apparently he didn't know his exact birth date - but thought it was sometime in early November, which from what she could recall would make him a Scorpio. He seemed relatively indifferent to the adjectives that the sign associated him with - loyalty, passion, resourcefulness. And she added in 'good looking' to earn herself a kiss.

She herself was an Aries, whose list of traits she'd never felt any kinship with in the past - things like courageousness, optimism, leadership… impulsive behavior. MacCready then jokingly insisted that the relevancy of these traits were so spot-on, it clearly made the whole practice scientific fact. She explained that a Scorpio/Aries romantic entanglement would not have been considered ideal, and he instantly chalked it all up to utter nonsense again.

She had then moved on to topics she was far more comfortable and familiar with - astronomy and the some of the various mythologies behind the stars. MacCready's assessment was that humankind had spent an awful lot of time and energy thinking about something they knew basically nothing at all about. After she tried to explain the infinite nature of the ever-expanding universe, he'd laid for a long time assessing the starry sky before saying, "That part makes sense."

She was surprised by his sentiment, because she too had always found that single fact, of all the astonishing or absurd things they knew about the universe, to be the easiest to accept. They were all just microscopic beings hurdling through space, and every second that passed they got farther and farther from everything else and each other and it would simply never, ever stop. If they didn't reach out and grab the stars, they would forever fall out of their grasp.

She'd kissed him deeply and insisted he tell her everything he thought on the matter, curling up in his the crook of his arm to listen to the warm rumble of his voice though his chest until she fell asleep feeling the most comfortable, the most contented and the most loved she had since thawing out ten months ago.

The ease of this life was starting to make her nervous.


	39. Game Plan

A few days later, she woke up in their bed in Sanctuary to find Dogmeat sandwiched between her and MacCready. It took her a minute to determine whether it was the man or the dog who was softly snoring… it was the dog. Mac had reached across the hound with one hand toward her waist, unconsciously grabbing onto a fistful of her shirt.

She was lost in her own thoughts about how untroubled the last few weeks had been, when Mac's tired voice broke through as he asked, "Is it just me, or does it seem too quiet?"

"I was just thinking the same thing," she said.

"Of course, I'd know that look anywhere," he said, resting a hand on her cheek, "It's your… 'Oh shit, some shit is about to go down' look."

"Language, RJ," she said with feigned reproach. She'd decided to pull out 'RJ' only when reprimanding him, and it drove him totally nuts, which she found adorable.

"Dogmeat, kill," he instructed, but his heart just wasn't in it and the dog did nothing but snore slightly louder and roll onto his back.

"So, let's recap," she said, "All's normal, more or less, in the Commonwealth for a couple centuries. Then I fall, confused and vengeful, out of a cryogenic pod. Within months the Brotherhood of Steel rolls in with a floating armada, and both the Railroad and Institute decide to stop pulling punches and go into full-scale assault mode. Thinking that I'm headed behind enemy lines to rescue my ten year old, I poof into the Institute unannounced. Instead of killing the intruder, they just say 'Hey, lady, about time you showed up! We have work to do!'. Now all three want me to inform on the other two, but none of them really has any decent rationale for why I should."

"It does seem like it's all coming to a head," he said.

"I feel like that's exactly what this Bunker Hill incident could become if we're not careful," she said, the dread in her voice evident.

"You really just have to decide if it's worth the risk to keep helping Shaun, or if it's time to be straight with the Brotherhood or the Railroad about what you know," he said.

"So I pretty much have to pick between crazy, crazier and craziest," she summarized, and sadly she wasn't kidding.

"Which is which?"

"Yeah, that's the question…"

"There was that time the Brotherhood totally saved our… _behinds_ …" he pointed out.

"That's true… And they've certainly been willing to give me room to breathe over the last few months. But I don't know how far that will extend once they find out I've been inside the Institute and didn't tell them… or that my son's the one in charge."

He sighed heavily, "My instinct says they'd court-martial the shi- …crap… out of you. But is there any way to get this done without stepping in some kind of crap, one way or another?"

How not to step in crap… a plan was starting to formulate in her mind, and though dangerous, she thought it might have a chance at working.

"What if I tip the Brotherhood off about the Railroad operating out of Bunker Hill, without letting them know its me tipping them off?" she began.

"Sure, a covert tip off… What about the Railroad?" he asked.

"Honestly… they still trust me. If they're distracted enough by a Brotherhood assault - I can probably just walk in there and get to the synths without either side realizing what's going on."

"And if they catch you? Making an enemy out of either… or possibly both… seems like a really bad idea. I know you want to do right by Shaun…" he cautioned.

"It's not even that anymore, honestly. I feel like I owe it to myself. I think I need to give him a chance, if for no other reason than so I can say I tried to make the struggle worth it," she said. "Plus… I need to get him to show all his cards so I can know what they're really up to, so I can make an informed decision."

"You still don't think he's being upfront with you?"

"No way… but, I think doing this will prove my loyalty enough that he might open up to me about it," she said.

"Fair enough. I trust you, and I'll help however you need me to. What's the plan?" he asked.

"Well, if Danse sees me at Bunker Hill… and I'm not in a suit of power armor shooting at the Railroad or the synths… we'll have a problem. If Danse is there when we show up, I'll need you to create a distraction to draw him away from the fight so I can get the courser in there unnoticed."

"So you're using the Brotherhood as a distraction… and then you want me to create a distraction to distract the distraction?" he clarified.

"Well, Danse specifically, but yes."

"Won't the other Knights recognize you?"

"Some might, but honestly, they'll probably react the same way as the Railroad will, and if I make no move against either side, they should both continue to assume I'm on theirs, even if they do notice me. The other Knights all tend to act like I'm their superior officer anyway," she said.

"Probably because that's how Danse acts," he pointed out.

"Yeah, maybe. Either way, I think I can get in unnoticed," she said, gesturing to the ludicrous stack of U.S. Covert Ops manuals she'd recovered on their travels, "I'm pretty good at being sneaky these days."

"Getting in, that might be one thing. What about getting out?"

"As much as I really don't want to…" she turned and looked at her Pip-Boy that was laying on the bedside table.

"You can just teleport directly to the Institute," he said with the same sense of dread she felt herself. "It could work," he sighed. He seemed amenable, though reluctant, then asked, "What kind of distraction did you have in mind?"


	40. MIA

"It's worse up here than I thought," Shaun said, his voice gravely with disappointment or contempt or… maybe resigned acceptance. She could almost never tell what he was truly thinking. The sun was still a couple hours from setting, but was sitting low in the southwestern sky as she stood next to her son on the rooftop of one of the CIT buildings and looked out over the city.

Her plan at Bunker Hill had, somehow, worked. She'd dressed the courser in some Minutemen garb and combat armor, then escorted him unscathed through the courtyard toward the hatch that led down into the undercroft that had been dug below the monument. She'd gone on a field trip there when she was in grade school, but when she tried to recount the tale to her courser companion, he replied with the sort of blank, unassuming indifference only a synth could pull off. She gave up on the small talk forthwith, deciding it best to focus on getting in and out quickly, quietly and safely. She hadn't seen any sign of Danse, his squad, or MacCready, so she could only assume all had gone to plan. It took less than a half hour to find the storage room the synths were being held in. She stood guard while the courser teleported them back to the Institute, then followed herself.

Shaun had wanted to meet 'up here' to debrief her, and though it had an unnecessary dramatic flare, she did appreciate the time alone with him. In the Institute, she felt like her every move was being watched, every word listened to, every decision judged. Shaun had never been above ground, and she wasn't sure why he had suddenly decided to take the risk. He was old enough now, she supposed, that any exorbitant radiation exposure might not have any kind of major impact on whatever studies he likely had himself enrolled in. She hoped, deep down, deep enough that she knew to be wary of imminent disappointment, that he'd done it because he'd simply wanted the chance to experience something new with her.

"It's not all bad," she replied after a while. "Don't get me wrong… it's scary. But there's good, too."

"It's a shame… that I couldn't have done something sooner. Helped before it… was too late," he said fatefully.

"It isn't too late," she said admonishingly. He couldn't really believe that? He didn't respond for a few long minutes, continuing to stare out across the city toward the sinking sun. Soft bands of coral and yellow wrapped across the southern sky and reflected their warm color on his pallid face. What was it like to see the sun for the first time?

"There's a Directorate meeting in a week," he said finally, turning away from the skyline and facing her, "We will be discussing some very important business regarding the future of the Institute. I hope you can be there."

She agreed to come, even though she felt more reluctant than ever about her association with the Institute. Shaun's reaction to glimpsing modern day life above ground had not been what she hoped for. He was more than disappointed by it… he was renouncing it, the whole thing, the way of life, the people, the terrible along with the good. Life above ground was worse than he'd ever imagined, so any justification he felt he lacked in his plans to further the Institute's goals were now justified. For a moment she felt like she should cut him some slack. It would be difficult, after all, to understand such a foreign world after living in total seclusion your entire life. But then she remembered… she'd climbed out from being holed up underground as well, and she'd been able to accept the Commonwealth at face value. It might be a shitty, scary, dangerous face value, but it was what it was.

She left the ruins and arrived at the comic book shop she and MacCready had decided to meet up at, the same place she'd found that ridiculous Silver Shroud costume she'd wreaked havoc around Goodneighbor in just before she'd met him. It was honestly probably the reason they met. She and Nick had almost been killed by Sinjin, so after returning Kent safely back to Goodneighbor and stripping herself of the silly trench coat, she decided she needed a drink… really, really badly. Nick pointed out The Third Rail, and the rest is history.

It was a history she was eager to continue forward with, but even long after the sun had set and dinner time came and went, MacCready had still not arrived. Her worry over his whereabouts grew stronger with every passing hour. She couldn't possibly sleep, instead taking the time to imagine the various ways in which she could 'roll out the calvary' to find him, should it come to that.

Option one was of course the Minutemen. She could have two dozen armed and ready in a matter of hours, likely more if they daisy chained the radio tower signals. That would be a thin but wide-covering approach. They could search almost the entirety of the Commonwealth simultaneously, but they would be sparse, and thus vulnerable.

The concentrated approach would be the Railroad. They always kept the mass of their numbers centralized to just a few locations, so it'd be easy to marshal a small but effective army to start sweeping the locations around Bunker Hill. They did have some serious new firepower and armor that she was a little jealous of, except when she'd tried on one of the armored coats, it was so heavy she wasn't sure she'd be able to move in it. With that kind of protection, however, she might just be able to stand there and take the bullets.

Then there was the Brotherhood. That'd obviously be the most impressive show. She then spent a nice chunk of her evening imagining a scene in which she would overthrow Maxson and take the helm of the Prydwen. Flanked by dozens of vertibirds, she would plow a straight line to MacCready, who had been captured by Super Mutants, of course, and was hog-tied, as if about to be roasted for dinner, on the top of Trinity Tower. She would leap from the deck of the Prydwen to land on the roof of the building, gunning down every last mutant on her descent. She would scoop MacCready up in her arms and then Danse would activate the winch to haul them back on board. Then they'd all high-five… in slow motion.

Eventually, it was sun up, officially twelve hours past their scheduled meet time. Time to worry. She was close to the airport, so she packed up her things and marched straight there, hoping she'd be able to glean some information about the outcome of the incidents at Bunker Hill, and thus be able to determine Mac's most likely whereabouts. A knight up on the parapet waved her down as she stormed toward the gates, running down the stairs to meet her as she walked inside.

"Paladin Danse has been looking for you all night," the soldier said anxiously.

"Where can I find him?" she asked.

"The brig - I'll radio and he'll meet you there." She nodded and turned to head quickly toward the vertibird landing pad that would shuttle her up to the Prydwen. Then she processed what the knight had really said. The brig?


	41. The Brig

The door to the brig slid open, revealing a large, open vestibule with a single door on the far wall labeled 'Containment Cells, Authorized Personnel Only'. She felt like that was a challenge, and she found herself glaring at the closed doorway as her mind started sorting through the various ways she could breech it.

There was a counter tucked into one corner, an officer stood behind it attending to paperwork, and he looked up to hand someone in a suit of power armor a piece of paper. The hydraulics on the suit buzzed as it turned to look at her - it was Danse, looking even more tired and weathered than usual.

"What the hell is going on?" she asked as he turned and crossed the room toward her. His tempered, but anxious grimace made her realize what was really happening.

"You _arrested_ him?" she asked incredulously.

"He's just being held for questioning," he explained, "I tried telling them he was with you, that it was your radio, but I need your statement before I can get him released. We're missing a squad of knights, they're convinced he knows something about it."

"That's ridiculous."

"I know, but think about how it looks? A man dressed like a Gunner with a Brotherhood issue radio draws a squad away from a serious firefight, claiming that a pack of rad chickens are attacking a settlement?"

"He seriously said rad chickens?" she asked with a sigh. Danse's look was deadpan, however, so she had to assume rad chickens were real.

"Your signature on this consent form is all I need to release him to you. It just says you agree it's your radio and you relinquished it to a civilian in an emergency situation," he said, handing her the piece of paper he'd received from the officer. She took it, signed it, and gave it back to him without even glancing at it twice. She could have just signed her own death warrant, but she trusted Danse enough to assume he wasn't lying. He stomped back across the room to give it to the officer behind the counter, who accepted it, reviewing it quickly before picking up a radio. Danse turned to walk back toward her, and he didn't stop until he was just a couple feet from her, staring down at her seriously for a few long, silent moments. She swallowed nervously… he could be quite intimidating when he wanted to be.

"I know I'm covering for you, soldier, but have no idea _what for_ ," he said gruffly, keeping his voice low, though the officer behind the counter wasn't close enough to overhear. She shouldn't be surprised he was onto her, he wasn't an idiot. Though spilling her guts to Danse here, on the Prydwen, didn't seem like the greatest idea in the world, she also knew it was only a matter of time before he found out what was really going on. And the information was probably better coming from her own lips, both so she could confirm he knew the actual truth of the matter, and so she could control the degree to which he knew said truth…

"I found a way into the Institute," she admitted quietly.

He was silent for a long time, then simply asked, "When?"

"A few weeks - it doesn't matter- it's more complicated than you know, Danse."

"Did you find Shaun?"

"Yes…"

"Why would you not tell me?" he whispered, looking around nervously to check for anyone that may have heard them, though they were still completely alone save the officer tucked behind the counter.

"It's… like I said, complicated. More time passed than I thought… he's not a kid anymore, he has power and influence - he might be dangerous. I'm on your side, Danse, you know I am. But he's my _son_ ," she pleaded.

"I know that, all I've wanted from the beginning was to help you find him," he said fiercely. "How you could hide this from me? I thought you trusted me," he said with disbelief.

"I do," she insisted, "Of course I do - but you have responsibilities that run deep. I know much you hold the Brotherhood sacred, but I needed time, on my own, to figure out what was going on. I never wanted you to have to lie to the Brotherhood for me, so I didn't tell you."

"Yet here I am, lying to them anyways," he said, but instead of seeming angry he mostly seemed resigned and a bit conflicted by his own actions. "How does that play into what just happened?" he asked.

"The Railroad," she said, stepping closer to him so she could whisper even quieter, "They were holding a few synths that Shaun wanted recovered."

He sighed and nodded as he realized what she'd done. "So you just walked in waving your flag of neutrality while we all shot it out?" When he put it that way, it really did sound like a jerk move.

She sighed, then nodded in a small, guilty way, "I didn't want you to have to cover for me, so I got Mac to draw your squad away from the fight."

"Damn," he grumbled, raising his hands as if he was going to run them through his hair, but the suit's dexterity, his enormous metal fingers, and that silly flight cap he always wore conspired against him. He gave up and rested his hands at his side again.

"I know… I screwed up," she said quietly, "You've been nothing but understanding about all of this, and you don't owe me anything."

"This isn't about keeping the score even," he said plainly. She was having a hard time discerning his expression. It wasn't disappointment or regret… it was something more complicated than that, something more… harrowing. She caught a glimpse of it as his hardened facade faded for just the briefest instant when her appraising look caught him off guard. He was… wounded. Then she suddenly realized what was really going on. He wasn't being strict or diligent, or unfair or chastising, he wasn't yelling at her or demoting her or disowning her - all the things she'd expected him to do. Because he was… heartbroken.

Her expression must have given away her realization, as his response was, "I didn't know… you were actually _with_ that guy."

She could do nothing for a few long moments but stand there, her brow creased, her mouth open. She just… she literally had no words.

"He has a name," she said after a while.

"Yeah I know, Gunner Number Seventy-Four or whatever," he replied despondently.

"Be fair - he got out of that a long time ago."

"How does he deserve you?" he asked in a tone that was surprisingly not harsh despite the sentiment's merciless nature.

"You don't know anything about what he deserves," she said quietly. He said nothing but looked down at his feet… or where his feet might be if could see through his own power armor. "Dammit, Danse," she cursed, but she wasn't frustrated at him, just the messy situation. "I'm sorry," she said genuinely, "I should have told you about Mac and I - outright."

He shook his head, "I knew, before… I just didn't want to admit it. I had hardly seen you without him glued to your hip for months - and the thing with the letters… I knew."

"Well I'm sorry anyways," she said, trying not to look too sympathetic, she knew he wouldn't want to feel pitied.

The door to the brig slid open suddenly, revealing a hunched over MacCready being assisted by a young initiate. 'Assisted' was generous, mostly he was being drug. Half his face was swollen and bruised, the other half had a series of deep scratches, relatively fresh blood running down his cheek. This hadn't happened out in the world, he had no defensive wounds other than what looked like chaffing around his wrists from some kind of restraint.

"Jesus," she exclaimed, rushing forward to take Mac's weight off the kid. The initiate backed away slowly, as if she was about to take her ire out on him, and he wasn't entirely wrong. "This is what you meant by questioning?" she asked Danse incredulously as she adjusted Mac on her shoulder so she could wipe away some blood that was running down his cheek. She held his face in one hand to look him in the eye, though he couldn't quite focus on her. He seemed responsive, but beyond tired.

"That's not regulation," Danse growled as he gave MacCready a once-over to assess his wounds. She would have argued with him more about it, but by the dangerous gleam in his eye, she could tell that heads were about to roll. "Get him out of here, I'll deal with it." He turned and stomped toward the door to the brig.

"Danse!" she called after him, and he stopped but didn't turn. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Shaun. I hope you can forgive me." He gave her a small nod, which despite its modest appearance, gave her an enormous sense of relief. It might take time, but she hoped things would even out between them, both from her betrayal and from any unreciprocated feelings. She knew one thing for sure… Mac was going to freak out.


	42. Regrouping

The fact that she thought Mac would be upset about Danse having feelings for her was just more proof that she did a really bad job of paying any attention, ever. Of course he was understanding, when wasn't he? He didn't even seem surprised. Though after explaining calmly why he just couldn't really blame the guy, he did amend it with, "I mean, I'll kill him. If I need to."

She was kneeling at the side of his bed at the Dugout Inn, tending to the gash on his face as he leaned against the headboard. It felt like it'd been forever since they'd last stayed there, and it didn't hold the same familiarity and comfort it had before. It mostly felt like an unavoidable stop on their way home… which was now, most certainly, Sanctuary.

Mac was by no means pleased by the way he'd been treated by the Brotherhood, but he didn't seem keen to hold a grudge either. She'd flooded him with a series of apologies, guilty puppy-dog eye looks, and offers to disown the organization entirely, or burn the Prydwen to the ground, Hindenburg style. He insisted it wasn't her fault, and even relinquished Danse from any ill favor. The squad he had with him yesterday was apparently comprised of a trio of unfortunate douche bags, and as they were all Paladins, he couldn't pull rank when they outvoted him on how to handle the strange man who'd summoned them. Though they were none the wiser as to Mac's real aim of leading them away from Bunker Hill, they were unfortunately still suspicious of his behavior, and grew even more so once they'd arrived at County Crossing to find - shocker - no rad chickens.

Mac wasn't prepared to answer their question about how he got his hands on a Brotherhood radio - and instead of explaining that it was hers, he apparently just said the first thing that came to mind. The interaction went something like…

"I found it."  
"Where…?"  
"In a ditch."  
"In a ditch?"  
"North of the river."  
"…North of the river?"  
"Outside a Super Duper Mart."  
"You found it in a ditch north of the river outside a Super Duper Mart?"  
"Yes…"

After hearing everything she needed to fully understand that Mac should never lead a covert ops mission again, she proceeded to tell him about her and Danse's conversation regarding his feelings for her. She thought Mac might have even an inkling of concern that she reciprocated even in a small way, but he was as unconcerned as always. Then again, she had stifled a laugh as she said it out loud, so that may have helped ease any concern he may have had. She felt bad for Danse though, he was a genuinely nice guy… a bit intense, but she knew if he applied even a fraction of that dedication to a relationship… she'd be one lucky woman. Or man, for that matter.

"What about fraternization amongst the ranks?" Mac asked. Apparently it was time to move onto the specifics of exactly how Danse planned for it to work.

"Honestly, that's probably why he never said anything."

"Lucky I made a move when I did then?" he asked with a smug grin, though the pain the movement caused his bruised, swollen face forced the expression to quickly fade.

"Hey, I kissed you first," she argued, trying to get his mind back off the pain.

"Uh, no, Cryo, I kissed _you_ first, then we pretended like we didn't want to kiss anymore for a month before you kissed me again," he said. The mere recollection of that interim time made her want to climb on top of him immediately, but she imagined the rough way in which she intended to handle him would have caused him quite a bit of pain at the moment.

"How'd it go with Shaun?" he asked, grimacing as she wiped more blood away from the worst of the gashes along his cheek. Stimpacks never seemed to work well on facial wounds, which continued to bleed and hurt a lot despite how many you injected. She had never considered herself much of a nurse, and she felt like she didn't really know what she was doing as she attempted to clean the gash.

"It was… enlightening," she replied. In the confusion of the last eighteen hours, she'd all but forgotten about her meeting with her son.

"Do tell," he said, "It'll distract me from the pain of you cleaning my wounds like you have bloatfly stingers for fingers."

"Jes- … Sorry, da- …darn," she said, sitting back and ringing the bloody towel out in a bowl of water. "Why won't you let me take you to see Doc Sun?"

"It's fine, it's just a few scratches," he said. Such a typical man.

"These few scratches are going to turn into horrible scars because of me," she said.

"Great - facial scars are hot, right?" he said. She sighed. He wasn't wrong, but she was the one that would have to look at them everyday and be reminded of how she put him in harms way and that he got hurt because of it.

"So what's the situation at our favorite underground advanced robotics consortium led by your elder offspring?"

"There's a Directorate meeting in a week, he wants me to be there. He's got some big announcement, apparently," she said with a sigh, finally getting the wound clean enough to start pinning the gash back together with a pack of sterilized butterfly strips she got from Vadim.

"Are you sure I can't just stick a couple dozen stims in it and call it a day?"

"No," he said plainly.

She continued, "He admitted that he was the one who released me. Just out of curiosity. To see what would happen."

"That's…"

"You can say it, it's screwed up."

"Sorry, Cryo," he said seriously.

"He'd never been above ground before. I thought he'd be… amazed. I mean, it's shit, but if you don't know any better… the sun, the sky, the clouds, the trees… But he looked right through it all as if it wasn't even there, went directly for the people, the situation. He's under the impression that everything up here is just… irrevocably flawed."

"And you don't agree?"

"No - hell no, Mac. There's… a lot of shi-… terrible stuff… going on up here, but there's people, just innocent people, too. And this world might have changed humanity, but… it is what it is now. What lengths do we go to to try and turn back the clock? He wants to fight a tide that's coming in one way or another, hell, it's already come in. And it can't be all bad - after all, it created Preston, and Sturg, and Duncan and… you. I just, I can't fault it for what it is. But… he talks like it needs to be culled."

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

"I'll go to the meeting and see what he has to say, but… I'm going to have to make a decision after that, one way or another. I can't keep dragging it on, helping the Institute further their plans when all logic says I should put the whole thing down before it's too late."

"That'll be good, I think," he said, kissing her hand as it brushed by his lips as she finished placing the last of the strips across the wound. "To finally know where you stand, to know where we stand."

"What do you think I should do?" she asked, climbing up onto the bed and tucking herself into the crook of his arm.

"I don't want you to be swayed by what I think," he said.

"I care what you think, though."

"I know, that's why I don't want to tell you. You have to feel like you made this decision on your own, or you might never feel right about it."

"You think I'll regret it?"

"No, but having someone to blame it on would give you that opportunity," he explained. He wasn't wrong. "Oh, you owe me a drink," he said.

"Do I?" she asked, sitting up to look at him.

"I know Danse told you about the rad chickens," he explained.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"That's a very roundabout way of adding a drink to the tally."

"I thought it'd be memorable."

"You were not wrong," she said, tracing the gashed side of his face delicately with her fingertips. Mac leaned over and produced a bottle of whisky from the bedside table.

"Ha," he said, seeming surprised by his own find, "I left this here when we stayed last. I'm surprised Vadim didn't steal it."

He handed her the bottle and she took a drink, then she asked, "Where are these supposed rad chickens?"

"Let's just say, what they lack in numbers, they make up for in size."

"Do they taste like chicken? I'd _kill_ for chicken." Her mouth salivated at the mere thought, then she sighed after realizing that saying you'd kill for something no longer had the same impact. Or any impact, really.

"They taste like rancid molerat," he affirmed. She frowned.

She leaned back against the headboard and let him lay on her chest, then proceeded to give him a detailed account of the various ways she'd planned to save him from the super mutants she was so sure had kidnapped him. He hadn't been allowed to rest at all while in the brig, so he quickly succumbed to sleep. She entertained herself by studying the map on her Pip-Boy while he stirred quietly. When it became clear that it wasn't idle dreaming but some kind of nightmare involving his ordeal in the brig, she woke him from the distress. She'd been through a lot of shit in the last ten months but she had never been… tortured. She imagined it was a special kind of abuse, one that made you feel violated and impotent and vulnerable.

So she laid down face to face with him and told him the calmest, sweetest story she could think of to try and de-stress his tormented mind. She went with an old musical she'd loved as a child, _My Fair Lady_. After explaining the plot in as much detail as she could remember, and amusing him with an abysmal impression of Eliza Doolittle, she went on to explain its origins as a play called Pygmalion. She then launched into an account of the Greek mythological figure of the same name. When he finally fell again into a calmer sleep, she stayed awake for a long time as her heart raced and her mind reeled with the various ways she could exact revenge on those who did this to him.


	43. Buckshot

They decided to spend a few days in Diamond City so they could catch up with Nick, Ellie and Piper. She also had every intention of marching back to the airport to have a word with Danse about the paladins responsible for MacCready's treatment in the brig, but she didn't see a reason to mention that to Mac.

They'd spent the morning apart, MacCready was feeling better and had made a run to Goodneighbor with instructions to buy every single fusion cell he could get his hands on, as she was sick and tired of running out. She'd stayed in Diamond City to try and talk Piper off the ledge, as the previous evening she'd accidentally… _maybe_ drunkenly… divulged to the reporter what she'd learned about the mayor while peeking at the terminals in the Institute. Thankfully she'd been able to convince her to keep it under wraps for the time being, until she'd made a final decision about what to do about her son… Shaun… 'Father', whatever.

She was sitting at a table outside the Dugout, waiting for MacCready to return and sipping a beer even though it was barely noon. Might as well start getting drunk now, then maybe by nightfall she would be gone enough to start screaming, 'Hey guys! The mayor's a synth!' from the rooftops.

With a thud, Mac dropped a heavy cooler down on the table in front of her. She looked up at him with large, innocent eyes, as if she'd never seen the cooler before in her life.

"Where'd you get all this?" he asked incredulously as he opened the top of the cooler, revealing its contents - full to the brim with caps.

"It's just some savings, and… my cut of what we've made off the stores we set up in Sanctuary," she said.

"Jesus," he said, unable to stop the expletive from slipping out, "This is like, eight hundred caps!"

"They're lucrative shops," she said naively, as if that was anywhere near the point he was trying to make.

"When did you even have time to get this to her?"

"I had Carla bring it down from Sanctuary before we left the other day."

"Did you think Daisy wasn't going to tell me?" he asked.

She scoffed, "Well I thought maybe she'd tell you _after_ it was already on the caravan." Then she grumbled, "The jerk."

"I can't take this from you, it's ludicrous," he insisted.

"You're not taking it from me, I'm _giving_ it to him. Note how I didn't even involve you in the transaction?"

"No way," he said, shoving the lid back on.

"I'm keeping his father from him, it's the least I can do," she said.

"You're not _keeping_ me from him, Cryo. He's _safe_ there, and happy. With me, he'd always be in danger. I can't do the work I need to do and protect him at the same time."

"I know that - I'm not questioning your decision. I just feel bad," she said.

"You don't think I feel guilty about it every day?"

"I'm not trying to make you feel guilty, really," she stood up to approach him, she needed to diffuse it before it spiraled into a serious argument. "It was part of the story," she explained. He looked at her questioningly. "You know… King Moneypenny's loot? He's going to distribute it, like Buckshot?" she said, and he looked like she had completely lost her mind. "It's part of our whole story - don't you read our letters?"

"No!" he exclaimed, as if it was a totally crazy notion.

"Really? I thought you'd… screen them… make sure I don't divulge any of your dirty secrets," she said.

"It's a letter… it's private," he said naively and she couldn't help but grin at how cute he was being about it. "So, but - what? What story?" he demanded.

"Buckshot and Bumper - "

" _Buckshot and Bumper?_ "

"Yeah, well we haven't named it, but those are the characters. Buckshot is like Robin Hood meets… Billy the Kid. With some… Spartacus thrown in. It's pretty strange, but it works. Bumper's the dog."

"Oh… Bumper's the dog, of course."

"He was going to pretend to be Buckshot. He's supposed to find other kids that need help, and… spread the wealth, like Robin Hood. But, to also keep some for himself, like his father suggested," she explained.

"Jesus Christ," he said slowly, and she wasn't sure how to take it at first. "That's… so… just…"

"I'm sorry," she said honestly, "I should have told you. I just… I didn't want you to be too proud to accept it. You want to provide for Duncan, I get it… because, I do too. You love him and he's important to you, so he's important to me. I thought… it'd make him feel good to help others. I should have told you."

He looked up at her with a strange look of disbelief and she still couldn't tell if he was mad or… what. He reached out and took her face in his hands to look in her eyes. He looked like he was trying to formulate something, but instead just kissed her in that fierce way.

He let go to look her in the eye, "After the way this world has shi- … crapped… on you, I can't believe you can still be so… selfless."

"It's not that," she scoffed nervously. She had truly never thought of it that way. She just had this ludicrous safe full of spare caps that just kept getting fuller and fuller, and knew a kid in D.C. who somehow still had a sweet, kind heart bigger than he knew what to do with which probably, in this world, was a dangerous thing to have.

She couldn't not encourage it, it just wasn't in her nature. So when their co-written story took an unexpected turn and found Buckshot and Bumper face-to-face with King Moneypenny's hoard of cash he'd stolen from the peasants by way of unjustly high tax rates, she saw it as a 'teachable moment', as her father would have said. She found a cooler to stash the caps in and wrote him a letter explaining that sometimes, the best stories are inspired by real life experiences. If he was feeling better and up to the task, he should - _take an adult_ \- and then go act like Buckshot and return the caps to their rightful owners, a.k.a. - the kids and families that lived nearby.

"Not selfless… what is it, then?" Mac asked. He wasn't calling her out, or thinking she was just being humble, he truly wanted a serious explanation.

"I guess I was just thinking about how my dad had worked so hard to make a better life for me than what he had when he was a kid… and my grandma did the same thing for him. I guess, we regressed a little bit in the last two hundred years, but it'd still be nice to try and continue that trend. Our generation… we have no choice. No matter what we do we have to fight and kill to survive and to protect the ones we care about. But, it might not always have to be that way. Maybe… his generation won't have to. Or his children or children's children, at least. _Some_ generation of MacCready will find a way to live a safe and normal life, and… hopefully by then they can still remember what human kindness is like."

"That's the sort of optimism I wish I had a way to teach him," he said.

"I told you from the start - I'd be the plucky optimist to balance you out," she said with a smile.

"You still need to work some on the pluck," he grinned, then his smile faded to seriousness as he wrapped his arms around her and spoke softly into her ear. "Someday, you're going to meet Duncan. And you're going to be the role model for him that… I never could be. That I never had. He's a lucky kid."

She smiled and ran her fingers along his cheek delicately, "Well, he has some pretty excellent genes."

They kissed in what was probably an indecent way for a public venue, but she didn't care as she couldn't stop thinking about what he'd just said… someday she'd meet Duncan. Of course she would, why wouldn't she? They were in love and he was his son, and… obviously someday, they'd figure out something, and they'd all be together. But somehow she'd not managed to think beyond her immediate future… which currently had one simple goal - endure whatever was coming to a head in the Commonwealth, and hopefully get out alive.

"Did Daisy have any letters from him?" she asked.

"No," he said, "Maybe Danse has some to pass along, but I'm guessing he was a bit distracted by the whole Bunker Hill incident."

"True," she said, "I wanted to swing by there tomorrow anyway, I'll ask."

"I really don't want you causing a ruckus on my behalf," he said.

"Who said anything about a ruckus?" she said, but he leveled a look at her that said he wasn't buying it.

"I'll just politely ask about the letters, I swear," she said, then added quickly, "And then I may also politely inquire as to the fate of those douche bag paladins."


	44. Final Verdict

'Court-martialed' was the answer to the paladin question, at least for the one that had beaten up on MacCready in the brig. He had yet to be sentenced, but was awaiting his punishment in a cell, which pleased her. She'd always been a proponent of taking justice into her own hands, but she was willing to work within the system when it made sense. She was mostly kidding when she asked Danse if she could have just a few minutes alone with the guy, but she dropped the joke quickly after receiving a stony, intense look from him.

Danse unfortunately had no letters from Duncan, which concerned her a little bit, only because they had been arriving in such a steady stream over the last few months. It'd been less than two weeks since they'd heard from him though, so it wasn't precisely time to panic. She left the Prydwen via the airport and walked north toward County Crossing, just far enough to get away from the airport's tech sensors so she could use her Pip-Boy to teleport into the Institute.

She was barely on time for the Directorate meeting, and she received more-or-less the exact welcome she'd expected. Shaun was pleased and the division heads ranged from indifferent to scandalized by her presence. He made his announcement, and she found she was doing that zoning-out thing she tended toward when people told her things she didn't care to hear. Cancer, really? Aggressive cancer. She figured she should have felt more devastated to learn about his condition, but it mostly just felt unnatural. What parent had to sit back and watch their almost seventy-year-old child die of cancer? Part of her wanted to help him in some way, but she honestly didn't know why.

The other part of her felt like it was just another side to this whole duplicitous, webbed scheme she was certain was being spun all around her. Then he threw another curve ball at her with the suggestion, which felt more like a decree, that she take over as Director in his stead. The others in the room vocalized her internal reaction, something to the effect of 'What. The. Hell.'.

It boiled down to one simple question - in what world was she qualified for that position? He turned on the charisma to throw some decent reasoning at them. She could see that for what it was, he'd gotten it from her after all. She had a worldly perspective, one the Institute lacked from sequestering themselves underground for too long. She was resourceful, clearly. She was willing to fight for what she believed in. She was a good leader, as proven by the rise of the Minutemen and the dozens of settlements she'd fostered.

After the division heads calmed down a bit from having two bombs dropped on them, they dispersed to attend to their daily tasks. Though they were still frazzled, they'd been placated, she thought, by how noncommittal she'd been about the whole thing. She asked Shaun a bit about his illness, and he was as dodgy and enigmatic about it as she'd come to expect.

Then he filled her in on the next major task he had for her - some pre-war technology they needed to complete their power generator, though power _plant_ might have been a more apt description. Why wouldn't he tell her what it was for? Power, sure, but why did they need so much of it, so quickly? He was being as cryptic as ever about his plans, and he was urging her to act immediately. She couldn't help but wonder if it was because he didn't want her to overthink it and realize that something was off about the request.

She wandered around looking for the Chief Engineer, Allie Filmore, who was supposed to have more specifics on the part she was looking for. She found her in Advanced Systems, either arguing or conspiring with Doctor Li outside Li's office. The doctor left to let them talk, and Allie filled her in on the specifics of what they needed - a Beryllium Agitator from Mass Fusion. The technical talk was beyond her, but when Allie started insisting she accompany her to obtain the part, she couldn't stop herself from laughing out loud.

Allie got quite grumpy after that, but despite the engineer's insistence, she maintained that it was way too dangerous to bring her along. She'd be taking on the task herself, and there would absolutely not be another word on the matter. Allie relented eventually, though petulantly, then gave her the details she needed to find the part and told her to relay directly to Mass Fusion as soon as possible. Then the engineer crossed her arms and stomped away in a gloriously childish manner.

She sighed, if that was any indication of how running the Institute might go, it wasn't really selling her on it. As she turned to leave, she saw him - ten-year-old Shaun… synth Shaun, the one she'd thought was really him while she was hunting down Kellogg and the Institute. He sat on the edge of a bed in a small, glass-walled room just off the main laboratory. He was holding a toy car and spinning the wheels dejectedly. Before she knew what she was doing, she'd walked over to stand in the doorway. He looked up at her with her own eyes and her husband's high cheekbones and her father's dark hair.

"Hey… Shaun," she said, trying to hide the trepidation she felt at calling him that.

"Hi!" he said, his face and mood lighting up. He set the car down on the bed and kicked his legs back and forth excitedly, too short to touch the ground.

"How are you?" she asked.

"I'm good. Quentin was mean to me again this morning, though," he said.

"That's too bad," she said, choosing to not commiserate by explaining how big of a jerk Quentin's mom had just been to her. She stepped into the room and knelt down on the floor so she could be at eye-level with him. "Why was he mean to you?"

"He's mean to everyone," he explained, "Mostly everyone at least."

"How do you like living here?" she asked.

"It's okay I guess. A little boring sometimes, but everyone is nice."

"Why's it boring?"

"They don't let me do much, I have to stay in my room," he said. She looked around at the sparse furnishings and handful of toys they'd provided him with.

"Well, there's lots you can do in your room," she said, trying to sound positive, "Just takes a little imagination."

"Like what?" he asked, focusing on her seriously, seeming both excited and surprised by her suggestion.

"Can you read? Write?"

"Yes, Father taught me himself," he said with a proudness that made her feel intensely guilty.

"You could read a book," she suggested, "Or write a story."

"What would I write about?" he asked.

"That's where the imagination part comes in," she smiled. "You've been up there, right?" she asked, indicating the ceiling. He nodded. "Write about what that was like. I bet Quentin would be jealous of all the adventures you went on."

"I could," he said thoughtfully, "They haven't wiped my memory yet." God. That statement was sad beyond reason. He'd said it so casually, like it was on par with getting your teeth cleaned.

"Are you happy here, at least? How do you get along with Father?"

"Yeah, I'm happy," he said with a smile she chose to not fully believe, "Father and I used to talk a lot, and that was nice. He used to visit all the time, but he doesn't really anymore." She wanted to explain the truth to him, she'd always thought it best to be straight with kids, to tell them like it was. That was easier said than done however, when they're looking back at you expectantly, a little, innocent, half-copy of yourself and waiting to hear the wise words you'd gleaned from living all those years before them.

She wanted to say, 'Because you're not useful to him anymore, kid.' But instead she said, "He's very busy right now with work. I'm sure he'll come back down to see you soon."

"You were looking for me, before, right?" he asked, and his brow creased a little bit, like he was trying to remember.

"I was."

"Because you're Father's mom."

"That's right," she said quietly.

"I'm… I'm sorry I'm not who you thought I was."

Jesus, this kid. He's sorry? Shaun made a ten-year-old copy of himself to experiment on his own mother, and this poor kid was sorry about it? He might have been technically synthetic, but his feelings were real, his sweetness was authentic. She finally realized what was wrong with all of this. It was obvious, she'd been thinking it just below the surface all along, but never thought or said it outright because then it would have been too real, too much to bear before she was ready to handle it. Her son was playing God, and he had to be stopped. The time for apathy was over, she couldn't keep playing both sides. This conversation had made the decision easy, at least. She was going to have to turn against her son.


	45. Agitator

She still didn't know if they could track her teleports in and out of the Institute or not, so instead of using her Pip-Boy, she wound her way up through the maze of hallways and elevators to the bay of relays the coursers used to get in and out. She didn't really know how to work them, but luckily there was a 'quick access' menu of the last ten coordinates used. She selected one labeled 'EBP Stn', which she hoped meant 'East Boston Police Station'. That would put her close to the airport, and she knew she was going to have to act fast in case they caught on to her deception. They still thought she was going to head out and take care of it herself, but once they realized she hadn't used the relay to head directly to Mass Fusion, they'd know something was up.

Thankfully, she did arrive outside the East Boston Police Station. She headed straight to the airport, trying to shake off the disturbing feeling of having all her cells dematerialized. She wasn't going to miss that. She used the Minuteman radio at the settlement there to summon MacCready - she'd had him wait for her at the Castle in case she needed to contact him via radio. She was glad now that they'd picked that location, as it would only take him an hour or so to walk to the airport from there. Using the radio wasn't necessarily the most stealthy move, it would be easy for the Institute to monitor simple radio waves, after all. So she had a settler relay the message instead, and used a series of code phrases she and Preston had come up with so they could communicate with settlements more stealthily, when needed.

All the Minutemen officials had code names, which would eventually cycle out on a regular basis. But for now, Preston was _Buchanan_ , Ronnie was _Wolfshiem_ , and she was _Carraway -_ all characters from _The Great Gatsby_. She insisted on assigning MacCready one as well, and he'd been displeased to say the least by her dubbing him _Daisy Fay_. To signal a timeframe they used creatures - ferals meant come immediately, super mutants meant wait until morning, deathclaw meant avoid the area entirely. Then there was the location - an order had been assigned to the settlements, roughly in an inward clockwise spiral starting from Sanctuary. This would be another rotating cypher once they got their shit together, but for now, "south" meant one settlement clockwise, "north" meant two settlements clockwise, "southwest" meant one settlement counter-clockwise, and so on.

It was confusing enough that she had to sit down and actually write out what the correct phrase was going to be to summon MacCready. The word 'support' was the key - indicating that it was a code message and not an actual call for backup or reinforcements. She wasn't completely convinced that Mac had been fully listening when she gave him the run down of how it all worked, so she hoped he was both near a radio, and remembered enough to understand that "Daisy Fay support requested. We've got ferals northeast of Hangman's Alley" meant "MacCready, come to the airport immediately."

She found Danse standing outside the bay doors that led into the warehouse, talking to Proctor Ingram. They seemed to finish their conversation just as she approached, and they turned to look down at her expectantly from their tall suits of power armor.

In one long breath, she said, "The Institute is building a major power source for an unknown project and they need something called a Beryllium Agitator from Mass Fusion and we need to get it first."

"What…" Danse said, and his confusion at her sudden decision to come clean made him seem just as blindsided as Proctor Ingram.

"I don't even want to know how you know that," Ingram said.

She sighed with relief. She had hoped for that reaction from the proctor, she always seemed practical.

"How big of an assault are we talking?" Ingram asked, "A few squads?"

"As far as I know, they still don't realize what I'm doing," she explained, "The longer we can keep it quiet, the better… I'm guessing you guys aren't keen on full-out war with the Institute just yet. It'd probably be best to just drop in with a few people, get in and get out as quickly and quietly as possible."

"Fair enough," the proctor said, "I'll join you. Paladin Danse?" Danse stopped his gaping at her for long enough to turn to Ingram and nod his agreement.

"Thank you," she said to them both. She glanced at her Pip-Boy to check the time. "Let's be ready to head out at eighteen hundred hours?"

"Sounds good, Knight," Ingram said. "I'll get the paperwork started. I'll meet you up on the Prydwen deck when you're ready." The proctor then turned and stomped toward the vertibird shuttle landing pad to head up to the airship. She turned back to Danse.

"I need to get some ammo from Teagan," she explained, "And maybe a drink or… ten. MacCready should be here within the hour, we should head out as soon as he arrives."

"Hell no," Danse insisted, "He's a civilian."

"It's just the rules," she explained, "I can't lay a grenade at my feet and lock the door."

"I don't know what the hell that means," he said.

"It doesn't matter - I say he can be trusted, he can be trusted. He'll put his life on the line for you and I expect it to be reciprocated. We go in there a united force, or not at all." She'd said a lot of things that bordered on insubordination before, but nothing quite that harsh. She wasn't even sure where it came from. Something about finally making the decision had amped up her authoritative instincts, apparently. "Sorry," she said, "This has just been a long time coming. I want this to go smoothly, I don't want anyone to get hurt. MacCready will be an asset in there, if you let him."

Danse nodded his agreement, but remained silent. They shuttled up to the Prydwen to stock up on supplies, then to her surprise, Danse bought them both a shot of whiskey at the bar, toasting to 'having finally made the right decision'. She went back down to the airport to meet MacCready at the gates. He was reluctant about coming back aboard the Prydwen, and rightfully so. He felt better when she informed him that the paladin had been court-martialed and was now locked up in the brig himself, and that she was amped up enough to burn the whole thing to the ground if they tried to lay a hand on him. So they shuttled back up to the airship to meet Danse and Ingram, who were waiting on the flight deck outside their assigned vertibird.

She paused before climbing onto the aircraft, barely noticing Ingram, Danse and MacCready as they crossed past her to climb aboard. This was it. If she got on this vertibird and stole the Agitator out from under the Institute, she might never see her son again. She stared into the distance and really considered what it was she was about to do... She figured it should go against every instinct, to turn against her own child, to turn an entire, powerful militaristic organization against him, to expose everything he'd entrusted her with.

But it didn't. It actually brought a sense of relief she'd never expected. She couldn't stop thinking about the conversation she had with the young, synthetic Shaun. No matter what she did, when she thought about her son, it was his grinning face she saw, not the older, 'real' Shaun. The version that led the Institute, that made these frightening decisions and was creating flesh and life from nothing, experimenting on real people by manipulating them with fake ones… this 'Father'… he wasn't that boy anymore. He wasn't what she had endured all this shit to protect.

She looked up to find MacCready's hand offered out to help her aboard. Danse stood over his shoulder, giving her an expectant look.

"Ready, solider?" Danse asked.

"Let's do this, boss," MacCready said. Let's do this. She reached up and took his hand.


	46. Radio Silence

She knew sitting in Sanctuary with white knuckles and a tense, clenched jaw wasn't going to change the fact that she'd turned on the Institute and that 'Father' must already know what she'd done. It'd been a month since the incidents at Mass Fusion, and there'd been no contact from the Institute, no apparent repercussions for her actions. It felt like she'd been barreling toward a cliff and she'd slammed on the brakes just in time, but now she was teetering on the edge waiting for gravity to decide if it was going to knock her backwards onto the ground, or pull her down into the abyss.

What did she expect? Was he going to hunt her down personally and reprimand her? Send a team of courser assassins to eliminate her? Or just continue on with whatever scheme he had planned in the first place, completely indifferent to the fact that his mother had betrayed his trust? Sadly, she felt like the latter was the most likely. She'd almost rather he be angry and vengeful - that would at least feel more like family than utter indifference.

She'd fallen in love, however, so that was a nice distraction from her familial worries. She'd picked it up off a gunner as they fought their way out of the area around Mass Fusion to get back to the vertibird. It was black, shiny, heavy and angry. Every time she fired it, it felt like slingshotting a two hundred pound iron projectile through an eighth-inch barrel. The sound it made was a razor-edged, mini sonic boom and it was music to her ears. The recoil was a bitch and a half, but she couldn't care less because it burned _so good_. She particularly loved the essentially instant way it killed practically anything she fired it at. It was love at first shot.

MacCready had never really seemed jealous before, but as she stroked the gauss rifle longingly while she lounged on the couch outside their room in Sanctuary, he seemed a little resentful. When asked why she didn't pay that much attention to him, she looked at him flatly over the top of her oversized aviator sunglasses and told him that she would, once he started firing devastating electromagnetically charged metal projectiles out his hands. She then daydreamed about a super-powered MacCready who wreaked havoc across the Eastern Seaboard firing hunks of metal out his half-man, half-robot hands. That unfortunately reminded her of 'Father', so the fantasy was short-lived.

In addition to being on the edge of their seat regarding the Institute, they still hadn't heard from Duncan, so MacCready was starting to become anxious. They'd received no letters from him in six weeks. After Bunker Hill, she thought they were just being paranoid - after all, before their new postal arrangement, no letters for a couple weeks would not have been unheard of. However, since they started shuttling them back and forth via the Brotherhood, they had grown to expect a certain immediacy from the correspondence… and six weeks was too long.

She continued to hold her gun like it was an adorable, doting puppy while MacCready paced back and forth along the roof in front of her.

"Do you want me to contact Danse?" she finally asked.

"No," he said immediately, then he stopped and stroked his chin contemplatively, "Maybe."

"Where's my radio?" she asked. Mac disappeared into their room and returned with the radio, passing it to her. She set the rifle down on the couch and sat up to summon Danse through the radio. They waited for a few long minutes, then she repeated the request.

"Copy, Knight. Go for Danse," he said finally. MacCready hovered over her expectantly, holding his fingers lightly over his mouth like he might start chewing on his nails nervously.

"We're a bit concerned about the lack of correspondence from the Capital Wasteland. Have they been having any difficulty getting convoys to the region?"

He was silent for a few moments, then said, "Transports and supplies have been arriving steadily, looks like everything is on schedule." The radio crackled a bit, then he came back on, sounding apologetic, "I've received no letters from the boy. Sorry, soldier." Mac bit his lip nervously and started pacing again.

"That's alright, Paladin, thank you for checking."

Danse crackled back on, trying to sound optimistic, "There have been a few bad rad storms that direction lately, it's possible the couriers and caravans are simply delayed."

"I'm sure that's it," she said, "Thanks Danse."

"Danse, out."

She set the radio down and watched Mac as he paced. After a while, she said, "Maybe it's the storms - "

"Something's not right," he said adamantly, shaking his head.

"Then let's go," she said simply.

He stopped pacing to look at her, "Go?"

"Let's go down there, check on him."

"That's over a week's journey, one way," he said.

"I can get us on a Brotherhood convoy," she said. He kept looking at her for a long while, like he was considering it but couldn't imagine actually doing it. "If you're going to be like this - we might as well go," she said, indicating his nervous behavior. "You're not going to be much use when you're so worked up. I wouldn't mind getting out of town for a while." Maybe keeping busy, as well as putting some distance between her and the Institute, would help ease some of her own anxiety.

"There's so many things it could be," Mac said, "He was doing so much better… but what if his illness came back? What if they were attacked, what if they're hurt? The way politics shift down there… who knows what could have happened. They're out in the country, away from people… but that's not always safer."

She stood up and took his hands in hers, "Then we'll go, we'll figure out what's going on. Just… try not to worry too much. Occam's razor, you know?" He looked at her blankly. She wasn't going to make him drink for that one. "The simplest explanation is the most likely? Danse said there's been storms… let's hope it's just that the roads got bad, the caravans got delayed. The letters could have even just got lost. But we'll go find out. We can leave in the morning."

"What about the Institute?" he asked, "What if they decide to strike back while we're gone? And I thought we needed to head to the Castle this week and help Ronnie train more recruits?"

"The Commonwealth won't fall to ruin just because we leave for a couple weeks," she explained.

"I'm not so sure that's true," he replied glumly.

She sighed, "Then we'll have the whole place to ourselves when we get back." Though that might have seemed like a worst-case-scenario, she actually didn't think it sounded half bad.


	47. Road Trip

She'd been able to secure them transport as far as south Philadelphia on a Brotherhood convoy, so their walk to the farm where Duncan lived was only going to take them about four days. She could have gotten them all the way into D.C., but Mac insisted that the shorter walk back north would have been exponentially more dangerous than the longer walk south. That proved fact when they endured little to no resistance on their journey, save a few stray packs of molerats, radscorpians, and the occasional feral ghoul.

Though she had her shiny new gauss rifle strapped to her back, she didn't want to waste the difficult to procure ammo on the easily slain beasts, so she'd defaulted back to her laser rifle. Mac had given her grief about carrying two rifles all the way to the Capital Wasteland and back, plus the pistol she always kept strapped to her leg, but there was no way she was letting the gauss rifle out of her sight. She knew the second she did, some evil, horrible, super mega mutated creature would pop up and try to kill them.

The first day of their journey, it was sunny but cooler than it had been up north. She almost thought it felt like autumn. They spent a lot of time talking about the different ways in which the Institute might strike back, what kind of preparations they should have in place and how they could more affectively train Minutemen officers. For the dozenth time, she offered MacCready a high ranking officer title, but for the dozenth time, he refused. He wavered slightly when she offered to change the pronunciation from Lieutenant to the British English 'Lef-tenant'… but he eventually refused anyway.

Figuring why the hell not, she just went right up the list after that, offering Captain, Major, Colonel, Brigadier General? He liked the word _brigadier_ , but she couldn't come up with a 'cool enough' explanation for where the term came from, so he refused that as well. She even reminded him of the incentives of holding a title - including a vote in the naming of squads, which he constantly complained about. Apparently he felt things like _Sixty Second Men_ and _Laser Musket of the Month Club_ were too silly. She even tried threatening to name the squad of snipers he'd been training to something that would annoy him like _RJ and the Killshots,_ but that didn't work either. She wasn't sure why he was so reluctant, as he happily endured all the responsibilities they piled on him, and he was clearly taking it seriously. He just didn't want to be called 'officer' for some reason.

The second day was clear skies again, but the heat had picked back up. The autumn crisp to the air from the previous day had diminished in favor of muggy humidity. They spent most of that day gossiping about everyone they knew in the Commonwealth, eventually landing on a discussion of what they thought each of them would have done if they would have been born pre-war. Nick was obvious, as he was technically pre-war already.

"Preston," Mac announced.

"Social worker," she responded immediately.

He nodded as if it was a fair answer, then said, "Cowboy clothing model." She gave him a flat look, but couldn't stop herself from grinning at the mental image the suggestion produced. So that was how this was going to go…

"Deacon," she said.

"Corporate spy," he responded.

"Elvis Impersonator," she said, causing Mac to laugh.

"Piper," he announced.

"Is journalist too obvious?" she asked.

"Kinda, what if she had to be something else?"

"Like a professional sit-in."

"Rabble rouser?" he suggested.

"Union activist," she said.

"Hancock," he said.

"Hippie?"

"That's not a job."

"I know, but, I'm right, right?" she said.

"Kinda yeah," he agreed, then gave his own answer, "Tour Guide."

"Cait," she said.

He was silent for a long time, then finally said, "I suppose 'professional bar fight instigator' wasn't a career?"

"No," she said distantly, trying to think of what her own answer was going to be. This was a tough one.

"Bank robber?" he asked.

"Oh! Stunt woman. Like for movies," she said.

"Good one," he agreed. "Danse."

"Soldier," she said. Obviously.

"Voice Over Artist," was Mac's response. She raised an eyebrow at him in surprise. "What?" he said. "With that deep, husky tone? Act like I'm wrong."

The third day was cloudy and a warm wind picked up. She spent a lot of time that day thinking about what she should name her gauss rifle. She started out with some simple classics… _Oh My Gauss, Electric Boogaloo, Maggie_. That led her to magnet puns… _Fatal Attraction, Magneto, Iron Man_. After discussing the mechanics of the weapon with Sturges, she knew the thing fired its ammo at just under the speed of light, amongst other fascinating facts, so that round of names went something like… _Sir Issac Newton, Trojan Force,_ _Almost Time Travel_. Then she tried combining the chemical symbols for magnetic metals - Iron, Nickel and Cobalt, if she remembered correctly. _Feconi, Cofeni, Nifeco… Knife Co._? It made no sense, but she kind of liked it.

MacCready won the game, however, when she finally told him why she'd been silent for the last few hours, and he simply said, " _Gausszilla_."

The fourth day was completely overcast and the humidity, if anything, was worse. It sprinkled on and off as they continued their journey southwest, skirting widely to avoid Baltimore. They spent most of the day talking about the concepts of 'vacations' and 'traveling'. MacCready was a little jealous, but also just very interested to hear about all the places she'd visited when her father traveled for work. They were specific locales, in that they necessarily included some kind of radio satellite array or telescope, but it had allowed them to see places they otherwise never have gone. In the United States they would frequent the VLA in New Mexico as well as a few different arrays in California and Colorado. They'd also gone to Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Chile, amongst others. They even visited one in China when she was really young, before they invaded Alaska.

She tried to play the whole thing down a bit, she didn't want him to think she was rubbing her worldliness in his face. So she complained that it was hard on her to keep up good grades when she was away from school for long periods, that sunburns were the absolute worst, and she'd missed her junior prom and two homecomings due to trips. He gave her a flat look, because it all just made her seem even more snooty. So she apologized and changed the subject - insisting she tell him everything about his own travel experiences.

Mac hadn't been anywhere outside of the northern Eastern Seaboard, though he had fun trying to make the various sights and sounds of the Capital Wasteland seem like a grand adventure. He even put on an affected 'travel show host' voice, which amused her greatly.

"As the largest settlement in the Capital Wasteland, Rivet City's the place to be if you're looking for a thriving shopping experience. Stay too long and you might die of Rust Lung, however. And watch your step - crimes of any kind are considered 'zero tolerance' offenses. They might just kick you out, but they also might stand you on the edge of the hull and execute you, firing squad style."

"Sounds like a _blast_ ," she said with a proud grin.

Mac rolled his eyes but smiled regardless, then continued, "From there it's a short walk to the Jefferson Memorial and the rest of the the ruins of downtown Washington D.C.. Here you'll be able to see the famous locales of a once-relevant oligarchy-"

"Oligarchy?" she asked with surprise.

"What, you thought America was a democracy?"

"No that's just a really big word for you," she said with a smile.

"Shut up, I read books," he argued.

"Sorry, continue."

He pouted a little, but relented after a few moments and turned his affected voice back on. "If you're looking for adventure, head to Underworld where there's a fifty-fifty chance you'll get shanked within an hour of arrival. If you've got a penchant for the fancy, Tenpenny Tower might have the affluence you're looking for, offering exclusive boutiques and a penthouse suite that's _to die for_."

"Pun intended?"

"Pun intended," he affirmed, then continued, "For a unique history lesson, visit the thriving town of Megaton - the only known settlement to be built around an armed nuclear warhead."

"What…" she said in disbelief.

"Feel free to consider it kid-friendly, however," he continued, "Because the bomb was safely disarmed over a decade ago! If you do, in fact, have tikes under the age of sixteen, Little Lamplight could be a fun destination for showing them what life could be like if you kicked them to the curb…" She groaned sympathetically and took his hand as they continued to walk, resting her head on his shoulder consolingly.

"They'll be thankful after that," he said with feigned ruthlessness, then switched his voice back on. "If you want to drive the point home even farther, you can head straight to Big Town after that, where Little Lamplight residents are banished on their sixteenth birthdays. Bring your firearms and fighting spirit however, this locale is constantly besieged by slavers and super mutants."

"You really are making the Commonwealth seem more or less like paradise," she agreed.

"Oh, I'm not done yet," he assured. They stopped walking when they suddenly heard a clap of thunder, seemingly out of the blue. They turned back to look east and saw it - a gigantic wall of a storm rolling toward them, and quickly. Not a regular storm either…it was a puke green, yellow amalgamation of dark clouds and vicious lightning that crawled horizontally along the sky, crackling with radiation. They immediately started hunting for cover, but they were, by design, far from populated areas, and thus any structures.

It was on top of them in less than a half hour. The rain started beating down in violent sheets, drenching them as they ran toward a low, rocky ridge that had resulted from a slab of rising concrete that had once formed a highway overpass. The wind was violent and unrelenting - way more intense than anything they'd encountered in the Commonwealth. As the wind picked up even more she started to notice that there were actual _objects_ flying past them… things like large tree branches, car tires, and what she was pretty certain was a lawn mower. This was no ordinary radiation storm… this was a rad _hurricane_.


	48. Truth or Dare

"This is quite a shit storm!" Mac called over the din.

"That's putting it lightly!" she yelled, shielding her face with her arm as the rain started falling even harder. It's velocity was such that each sharp drop felt like its own individual injection of radiation. Though she couldn't hear her Pip-Boy's geiger counter over the noise of the storm, her stomach was starting to roll with the continued exposure, and she knew they needed to find shelter soon. They were, of course, in the middle of freaking nowhere.

"Over there!" Mac yelled, pointing west toward a rocky outcropping. She couldn't see very clearly through the haze of sickly green, blinding rain and violent flashes of lightning, but it looked like their best shot at finding somewhere to take cover nearby. He grabbed her hand and they ducked away from the embankment and back into the brunt of the weather. She'd never experienced wind like this before. It felt like it was going to rip the hairs right out of her head, the clothes off her back, and if it picked up even five or ten more miles per hour, it would have likely knocked them clean off their feet.

They crawled along the rocks for a few long minutes until they finally found an opening just high enough for them to slide under. As they slid between the rocks she found herself hoping that the space would open up into some kind of grand cave complex where they could light a fire and set up a proper camp. That was clearly not going to happen, if anything the spacing was getting more narrow the farther in they went. However, they were able to scoot between the rocks far enough to gain a decent protection from the wind and rain, so they decided it would be smartest to stay put there to ride out the storm.

After just a few minutes, she realized she was shivering uncontrollably. Though it wasn't dangerously cold, they were both drenched and this mini-cave's size wasn't going to allow them the opportunity to get out of the wet clothes. They opted instead for lying on their sides, face-to-face, holding each other, hoping they would start to warm up if they shared their body warmth.

"How close are we?" she asked.

"Close - if this storm dies down by morning, we should make it before nightfall tomorrow," he said.

"Good, we're getting low on food… this delay will only make it worse," she said.

"Sorry we can't dance," Mac said, and they shared a grin that made her blush. Then he said, "Want to play truth or dare instead?" She raised an eyebrow at him. She had certainly not expected that suggestion.

"Sure," she agreed, "But you first. Truth or dare?"

"Normally I'd be a dare kind of a guy," he said thoughtfully, then turned his head to have a look out toward the storm, "But I feel like our whole lives are just one big dare."

"Truer words…" she said with a sigh. As if to punctuate the sentiment, a vicious crack of lighting struck nearby, causing them both to flinch.

"Truth," he sighed.

"What's the one thing I do that annoys you the most?"

"I knew it was a trap," he grumbled.

"This game was your idea," she reminded him.

"Alright fine," he said. He thought about his answer for a few seconds. "I guess, it annoys me when you flirt with guys to get something you want."

" _What?_ " she said, "I do not!"

"You do," he said, as if it was incontestable fact. "Just a little bit."

"I'm naturally charismatic, that doesn't mean I'm flirting," she argued.

"I'm just saying, you could throw a girl in there every once in a while to amuse me, at least. Cait or Piper, something."

"You do enough flirting with Piper for the both of us," she said grumpily.

"Oh _what_?" he said with disbelief, "Like hel-… I do not!"

"You _so_ do," she said, then quoted him from last month when they were laid over in Diamond City, " _Now angel, you can't go running up to the mayor's office and shoot him in the face just because you know he's a synth, you'll mess up your shiny black hair and you might get his fake synth blood on your flawless, snow-white skin. Now sit down like a good girl and MacCready will get you another drink_."

"One - I was diffusing her for _your sake_ , and two - that is _not_ what I really said," he argued.

"Whatever, you were thinking it," she said, crossing her arms in feigned annoyance, though the cramped quarters caused the gesture to lose some of its impact.

"Come here," he relented, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her closer, "Like you ever need to be worried for a single second."

"I'm not," she said genuinely. It was just fun to see him squirm about it. He kissed her and they both seemed to be pretty into the idea of going farther down that road, but after a few long moments, he stopped.

"Nice try, you're not getting out of this," he said, pulling his face away so she couldn't try to continue to kiss him. As if it wouldn't be as easy as one pouty doe-eyed look or well-placed hip thrust to break his resolve. She hadn't intended to put off her turn by inciting him, but it wasn't a half bad strategy.

"Truth," she finally decided.

"What's your biggest regret?" he asked. She swallowed hard, because she instantly knew the answer to that question but couldn't imagine in a million years that she was going to tell him, right now as they were pressed face-to-face in a dank sliver of a cave while the radiation hurricane outside brought about the second apocalypse. He seemed to take note of her significant pause, but didn't say anything as he awaited her response.

"Dare?" she asked, her voice squeaking.

"Nope," he shook his head. Fair enough. She had to at least try to get out of it. It would have been easy to come up with a lie, or go the so-sweet-you-can't-be-mad route and say something in a dreamy voice like, 'That I didn't kiss you sooner', but that would all be bullshit, and they weren't in a place where they lied to each other about their lives.

"My father didn't want me to marry my husband," she began, only realizing how brusque it sounded after it'd come out. Mac raised his eyebrows but said nothing and waited for her to elaborate. "He thought we were too young - that we should wait until I finished college, until after my husband got back from his tour overseas. But I didn't listen, I didn't care. You know how it is when you're young and in love and anything your parents have to say on the matter is clearly wrong because they just don't _get_ you."

He gave her a flat look and she sighed at her own foolish question. Obviously MacCready didn't know 'how it was' to be a disobedient teenager with a loving father who only wanted the best for you.

"Old world problems," she said with an apologetic grin. "So, when we went to the courthouse to get married, my dad wasn't there."

"You regret not waiting?" he asked, "You think he'd of come if you got married later?"

"Probably, but that's not the part I regret," she said with a sigh. "We had always been close, closer than any of my friends ever were with their fathers by a long shot. We were… _best_ friends. But when I got married, everything changed. We didn't talk as much, we visited each other less. There was always this… cloud hanging over us in the form of a son-in-law he didn't want. So the last few years of his life, we barely even spoke."

"He died before the bombs went off?" he asked.

"Only by a few months. It was the day Shaun was born," she said, and her voice broke slightly with the admission. She was starting to get worked up. She hadn't vocalized any of this to anyone before, literally. She hadn't even told her husband the whole truth, because at the time, speaking it out loud would have made her guilt too difficult to bear.

"My husband was still overseas," she continued, "And my mom was in California, and we didn't really have any other family to speak of. So when I… went into labor, I had the nurse call my dad." She took a breath and looked down, because she needed the time to clear her throat of the guilty lump that had formed. This was the part no one knew, the real answer to his question.

"He was rushing to the hospital to try and make it in time," she said.

"Jesus," Mac replied, continuing to study her with a knitted brow before pulling her into his chest and wrapping his arms fully around her back to hold her close. "You can't blame yourself for that."

"If I waited to get married, if we held off having kids longer, if I would have just had the guts to reconnect with him earlier… there's a dozen different ways in which I could have stopped it," she explained, her voice muffled as she talked into his duster.

"It was an accident, you couldn't have known what would happen," he said. She realized a single tear had escaped onto her cheek when MacCready wiped it away with his thumb before planting a light kiss on the spot.

After a long while, she said, "I miss him."

"I know you do," he said, "He's the only person you talk about from before."

"He's the only one that mattered," she explained. Though her mother was technically 'around' during her childhood, she was distant and aloof. Her father always said she was just a dreamer, a free-spirit, but she knew he was trying to disguise the reality from her, which was that she was an alcoholic who had always refused to get help. She'd actually shown some interest in becoming a grandmother, and that was what had led her to rehab in California just before Shaun was born, and that's where she was when the bombs went off.

"I think what matters is that… when you needed him, you called," he said, "He knew that, in the end." She looked up at him and met his warm gaze, knowing she looked shocked. How had he so quickly internalized something she'd struggled with for so long, then so easily turned it to a positive light? She kissed him in a grateful way and then tucked her face back into his neck so she could take comfort in his warmth and feel his slow, calm pulse beating just beneath the surface. And despite the tempest that raged just outside, she didn't think she'd ever felt safer. She felt grateful that if they had to be in it at all, at least they were in this shit storm together.


	49. Homestead

They woke early to find a sunny, hazing morning, the barren landscape around them apparently no worse for the wear, save the displacement of debris and some pretty decimated trees. None of that looked out of place in this world, though. They walked for almost eight hours before stopping to eat the last of their food. They hadn't accounted for the delay the storm had caused, so hopefully they'd either make it to the farm tonight, or find somewhere to loot some food from. They didn't rest for too long, they were on the home-stretch, so their anticipation lent them some endurance, despite how weary their legs were from walking for four days straight. They arrived just an hour or so before sunset.

And just like that, there he was, a six-year-old edition of MacCready standing on the porch of a white farmhouse wearing a t-shirt and the bottom half of a kid's vault suit held up with a pair of suspenders. His brown hair had a strange, small patch of blonde on one side, and was completely disheveled, sticking up in every direction. His skin was a warm, light tobacco color that must have come from his mother.

He looked at her with big, round versions of Mac's gunmetal blue eyes and by the look on his face you'd of thought she just told him he won a million caps and a trip to the moon. His look was expectant and excited and hopeful and he seemed every bit as optimistic and carefree as his letters made him out to be.

"Cryo?" he called out, then hopped off the steps to land on the dirt and run toward her at a full sprint. She wasn't sure how to react as he barreled toward her - did he want a hug? Yep, that became clear as he plowed into her legs and wrapped his arms around her waist, almost knocking her over.

"Take it easy, buddy," MacCready laughed. She leaned down to hug him back, taking note of how thin he was as she felt his shoulder blades sticking out from his back. She felt a surge of what she assumed was maternal instinct in the form of wishing she'd brought something for him to eat, though judging by the rows of crops she could see on the far side of the house, they weren't lacking for sustenance.

"Dad," he said, but not with the excitement he'd shown in her greeting. It was just pure, candid relief. MacCready knelt down to hug him for a few long moments and she saw Mac's face in an entirely new light, one that had instantly lost years of worries and wrinkles and fully expressed the absolute relief of having his son safely in his arms. Then she remembered - this was the first time in years MacCready had seen him healthy - unmarred by the terrible affliction that had almost killed him. Then she noticed the light scars and scabs that the boils had left in their wake, covering his arms and the back of his neck. He was young enough that with time they would likely barely be noticeable at all.

Then Duncan and MacCready shared a moment that made her feel like by observing, she was violating some kind of sacred father/son bond. But it was the sweetest thing she ever saw in her life so she couldn't look away. Like some kind of preordained ritual, they faced one another, nose to nose, with the blankest, most serious, calculating expressions. Then they just stared for a few long minutes, studying each others faces as if assigning every inch to memory. Finally, Duncan burst out laughing and MacCready shortly followed.

"You win, this time!" Duncan squealed, then giggled and turned to run back toward the house. "Uncle Owen's grilling brahmin out back! I want to show you our tatos!" he yelled, disappearing around the far side of the house. She exchanged a relieved look with MacCready before following him around the side of the house. In the back, a man wearing jeans and a plaid shirt was hovered over a fire pit. Large cuts of meat were laid aside and he was just beginning to start a fire. He turned around as they got closer, seeming surprised by who he saw, but not caught off guard that someone was approaching.

"Robert - aren't you a sight for sore eyes?" the man said with a rough, weathered voice. He was quite tall and wrapped with thick muscle but had a gentle look about him. His hair was shorn as short as his beard, all of which was salt and pepper, though he couldn't have been older than his late thirties. He gave Mac one of those man-style hugs that was half hand shake, half rough pat on the back.

"Owen, Jes-… why'd you stop writing?" Mac asked, "We were worried sick."

"We?" Owen asked with a small grin as he looked toward her. "I'm guessing you're the one I've been hearing so much about from Duncan?"

"Nice to meet you," she said, reaching out to shake his hand.

"Likewise," he replied, giving her hand a firm shake, then turning to MacCready. "We just got back last night - we got driven out by super mutants a few weeks ago," he explained, dread in his voice from the memory. Duncan ran toward them from the small tato patch on the side of the house with an armful of ripe fruit.

"Cryo, look!" he said excitedly, dumping the tatos on a nearby picnic table before holding a couple out to show her.

"Wow," she said, kneeling down to have a look at eye level. She was surprised that she didn't have to pretend to be impressed… the fruit looked downright great. "Those look amazing… how are they so… much like tomatoes?"

"It's called _splicing_ ," Duncan explained, and she raised an eyebrow as she turned to look at MacCready with disbelief.

He gave a nod to Owen, then explained, "Owen comes from a long line of botanists."

"I see," she said, making a mental note to talk business with the man later. She wanted every settlement in the Commonwealth to have these seeds. She looked back at Duncan as he turned around to set the tatos on the table. As he reached up, his shirt came untucked from his pants and she noticed a small, clean strip of gauze taped to his lower back.

"What happened here?" MacCready asked, seeming to notice the injury at the same time. He knelt down to inspect the bandage, which was bleeding through a bit.

"I don't remember," Duncan said.

Owen laughed, "You wiped out while running laps in the gourd fields."

"Right," Duncan said, his look blank at first, then he smiled, "Right!"

"Where the he-… heck… is your coat, bud, it's getting cold," MacCready asked, indicating the western sky as the sun was close to setting.

"I took my sweater off when I was running around the barn because I got hot," he explained excitedly.

"Are you sure you feel good enough to be running around so much?" Mac asked with some worry.

"I feel great, dad, really!" he said, "Look!" Duncan then sprinted toward the barn to demonstrate his unending energy by running around it in circles.

"He's been like this for weeks," Owen said. "I think it really worked, Rob." He shook MacCready's shoulder with one large hand and they shared a grateful expression. MacCready turned to watch Duncan with a look in his eye she'd never seen before - a combination of intense gratitude, maybe a little optimism. But most importantly - hope.


	50. Cookout

MacCready sat down on the picnic table next to the grill, watching as Duncan literally ran laps around the barn. Owen turned back to start lighting the fire, and she stepped forward to sit down across from Mac.

"So what happened, Owen?" Mac asked. "Mutants this far out?" he said with disbelief, "That's why we picked this place."

"I know, it was a fluke," Owen explained, "The Brotherhood was flushing them out of Silver Spring, I think some of the residuals were driven up north in all the chaos. We could have stayed and fought them off ourselves if Eclair and Joseph were here too - but I didn't want to risk it with just me and the kid."

"You did the right thing," MacCready agreed. "Where are Eclair and Joe anyway?"

"They went down south to trade, we're starting to look into finding some specialty seeds for splicing, and you know how Eclair is about his ingredients," Owen said. "Everything had been so quiet for months, it didn't really seem like a big deal to let them go for a few weeks. Shit timing, of course."

"How'd you drive the mutants out?" Mac asked.

"It took a few weeks of convincing, but eventually I got the Brotherhood to spare a few soldiers to come up and take care of them. Angela let us stay with them while we waited - she says hi, by the way."

MacCready rolled his eyes, "You mean she asked you to punch me in the nose again?"

"Yeah," he laughed. That story sounded familiar… this Angela must have been the 'Princess' he'd deposed in order to become mayor of Little Lamplight. She sounded like her kind of girl. The fire finally caught and roared to life and Owen stepped back toward the table to let it heat up. "I should have written from the Capital to let you know what was going on. I'm sorry."

"It's alright, I'm just glad you're safe. I'm surprised the Brotherhood was willing to come out this far," MacCready said.

"Me too," Owen agreed, then she swore he blushed as he looked over at her, "I may have thrown your friend's name around a bit."

"Good," she said, hoping to alleviate any guilt he felt about using her position as leverage. "The Brotherhood owed us one."

"You know, this one makes a mean sauce if Eclair's got some herbs squirreled away anywhere," MacCready said, shooting her a grin.

"Oh yeah?" Owen said, "Just so happens the guys picked some up on their last run."

"Just point me to the stove and some spoiled wine and I'll work my magic," she said dryly, cracking her knuckles enthusiastically. With these seemingly non-potato tatos… she wasn't quite ready to call them tomatoes… the barbecue sauce would be better than ever. She gathered up the tatos Duncan had picked and followed Owen inside to the kitchen, which was stocked surprisingly well. They had some things she'd never seen before - flour that they must have made from razorgrain, _butter_ … they must have had a milk-producing brahmin in the barn, and to her surprise, a half dozen bottles of actual vinegar.

Owen offered one out to her then said, "I'm guessing this is what you're really after? Unless spoiled wine is truly part of the recipe?"

"Great," she said as she took the bottle, unable to hide her surprise. Where'd they get all this awesome loot? "I don't suppose you've managed to make vegetable oil?"

He shook his head, "Not yet I'm afraid, but I've heard they have sunflowers down south. Maybe the guys will return with some seeds." He showed her where the pots and utensils were, he even had an actual set of knives she could use to chop the tomatoes. This was going to be downright civilized.

She took her time making the sauce, with the new ingredients, getting the balance right was going to be a matter of trial and error. It took almost forty minutes to finish up, and the sun had mostly set by the time she brought the finished sauce out to Owen. He took a whiff, looking quite impressed before lathering it onto the meat to start grilling.

At Duncan's insistence, she joined him in the mutfruit fields to play Tag, while Owen and MacCready hung out by the fire and caught up. She was surprised as she saw more and more of the farm that just three men and one kid could tend to so much land themselves. She was also surprised that the super mutants hadn't caused more damage, they tended to leave destruction in their wake, or at least bloody bags of flesh and bone.

Tag eventually turned into Hide and Seek and then Marco Polo, which was a game she was surprised Duncan knew about. She was exhausted from chasing him around, so she tried to reign in the exertion a bit by drawing a grid in the dirt with a stick and showing him how to play Hopscotch, which he found very entertaining. He then wanted to know the details of absolutely every game she knew about.

She explained the rules of Simon Says, Capture the Flag and Shadow Tag. At first she thought the kid's attention span was just very short, but after a while it became clear that he simply wanted to know everything there was to know about everything. They were in the middle of coming up with a secret handshake when dinner was finally ready. She promised him they'd finish it later, and he high-fived her excitedly before dashing over toward the picnic table.

"Hands," MacCready reminded him before he even sat down. He did an about-face and dashed over to the water pump to wash up. MacCready dished up four plates of barbecued brahmin meat, grilled corn-on-the-cob and half an apple each. _Apples_. Her mouth was already watering as she sat down across the table from MacCready.

" _Hands_ ," he said with a grin, and she shot him a glare before dejectedly getting back up to wash her hands along with Duncan. Owen put the remaining meat on a plate in the middle of the table and sat down next to MacCready just as she and Duncan climbed back onto their side of the bench.

"Looks great, thanks guys," she said.

"I think we're all about to be thanking you," Owen said, "This sauce smells amazing."

MacCready passed her two small ceramic shakers. _Salt and pepper_. She salted her corn beyond reason and then about died when MacCready passed her the butter. Buttered and salted corn-on-the-cob? Had they actually died in that rad hurricane last night, and now she was in heaven?

Mac finished buttering Duncan's corn and passed it to him. The kid ate like he'd never had food in his life, and consumed almost twice as much as she did. The sauce was a resounding hit, MacCready admitted she'd outdone herself this round. She insisted it was due to the real vinegar and more tomato-than-potato tatos.

The night air was starting to feel more like autumn, so after dinner they sat on blankets close to the fire and told kid-friendly versions of some of the hijinks they'd gotten up to back in Boston. Before she knew it, Duncan, wrapped in MacCready's duster, had laid his head on her lap and fallen into the kind of deep, exhausted, worry-free sleep only a child could enjoy. She and Mac then proceeded to fill Owen in on what was really going on in the Commonwealth, Institute drama and all.

"Sounds familiar," Owen said, rubbing his short hair nervously with one large hand.

"Yeah?" she asked, "I could really use some advice if you have any wisdom on the matter."

"A little over ten years ago, we had some… unrest in these parts," he said, sitting back and taking a drink of his beer.

MacCready sighed, "Now that you mention it, this does seem to draw a lot of parallels to the Enclave."

"Enclave?" she asked. MacCready held his beer out to indicate she owed him a drink. She took the penalty willingly, she'd drink them both under the table if it meant finding out anything that might help her deal with the Institute.

"All we really know are rumors and the version the Brotherhood likes to teach recruits," Owen warned. "But, here's the long and short of it."

He proceeded to give a relatively detailed account of a series of events surrounding the Enclave and Project Purity - something Mac had mentioned to her in the past. Considering his insistence that it was all conjecture and hearsay, he seemed to know a great deal of specifics. She also realized about half way through the story that the 'vault dweller' he was talking about was in fact the same 'mungo' MacCready had talked about looking up to at Little Lamplight.

"Mac, are you kidding me?" she asked, turning to look at him.

He was blushing, but his face was blank, as if clueless to her meaning. "What?"

"The woman from Little Lamplight? That was the same person you said _died_ completing Project Purity?"

"You heard Owen - it's all rumors. I cannot confirm that," he said simply, taking a long drink of beer. Here she thought she was the one fate kept throwing shit at. Maybe it was actually MacCready.


	51. Nickname

Owen finished up his account of the Enclave's mysterious origins, secretive dealings 'for the betterment of humanity', and even more secretive re-seclusion from the public eye, all of which sounded mightily familiar. Unfortunately it didn't give her much in the way of advice, other than that she might expect a long, treacherous road ahead. It did help to know that the woman died heroically - bringing clean water to thousands of people, and stopping the FEV virus from being introduced into the water supply. She wasn't sure she'd be afforded any kind of opportunity to make death 'worth it', unfortunately.

They finished a couple more beers as they discussed more cheerful topics, she even got Owen to tell a few embarrassing stories about MacCready, facts she intended to hold over him for a long time. She discovered that the other inhabitants of the farm, Eclair and Joseph, were residents at Little Lamplight along with MacCready, which she found endlessly fascinating. Eclair had been the 'cook' - hence the well stocked kitchen - though MacCready insisted that his skills as an adult far exceeded those he had a child.

Joseph had been a teacher of sorts, though after falling into a depression after the death of his sister last year, he hadn't been giving Duncan as many lessons of late. He had taught him to read and write at least, and she thought he'd done a pretty decent job at it. She wasn't completely up on her developmental milestones for children, but for just six-years-old, she felt he was a bit ahead of the curve.

When they realized it was past midnight already, they agreed to call it a night. MacCready scooped Duncan up off her lap and carried him inside. She followed him into the foyer, but let him tuck the boy in alone.

"Where should I sleep?" she asked when he came back out of Duncan's room. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"What are we, fifteen?" he said. "You sleep with me, I have a room still."

"What about Duncan?" she asked.

"He's a kid, Cryo, not an idiot," he said, holding his hand out toward the stairway to indicate that she should head upstairs.

"He knows?" she asked as she passed, suddenly worried that she may have done or said something to tip him off.

"We haven't had the 'Is this my new mom?' talk, if that's what you're asking," he said, showing her into a small but nicely furnished room at the top of the stairs. That was _not_ what she'd been asking, but she found herself strangely pleased that he'd had that thought process.

"But again," MacCready explained as he sat down on the edge of the bed to start untying his boots, "He isn't stupid. I couldn't hide how I feel about you from him even if I wanted to."

"He's a smart kid, that's for sure," she agreed, shutting the door quietly behind her. "But man, his energy is exhausting."

"You have no idea how great it is to see him that way," Mac said. "He was _so sick_ the last time I saw him. I didn't think he was going to make it," he explained, his eyes filled with dread at the recollection.

"Mac," she said gravely, stepping toward the bed and dropping to her knees in front of him. She grabbed both his hands in hers and looked at him seriously. "This place is amazing. You have to stay here, with him.

"How do you think they afford things like brahmin meat and herbs and unique seeds?" he said.

"I know, but surely with four men here you could each pull your weight making caps to support the group? So you can be here, with your son?" she asked.

"You know what I'd rather do?" he asked seriously.

"What?"

"Wrap up this shit storm that's about to hit the Commonwealth, then bring him home to Sanctuary." Her heart lurched at his mention of home, so nonchalant as if that was clearly shared terminology for them.

"What if the shit storm gets you killed?" she asked.

"It's not going to," he said, "I've got way too much to live for now."

"That's a great sentiment, but it doesn't get you less killed," she pointed out.

"I want to be with my son," he explained patiently, "But when I do it, finally, it has to be right. And it has to be permanent. I'm not going to move him from place to place while I figure my sh-… stuff out. You and I have unfinished business in the Commonwealth, and he won't be completely safe there until we've taken care of it."

"Don't worry about my crap," she said, "If you're ready to be with your son, then be with him."

He sighed, then laid his hand on the side of her face gently. "You don't seem to… get it. There's no home for Duncan and I that doesn't involve you."

She hadn't expected that sentiment out of him… but then again it wouldn't be MacCready if he wasn't surprising her at every turn.

"That works for me," she said, giving him a warm smile. He leaned forward and kissed her.

"We should get some sleep," he said as he started unbuckling his armor, "We'll want to leave first thing."

"Leave? Already?" she asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed to unlace her boots.

"I know, it sounds harsh," MacCready said. "It's worked better in the past. The longer I stay, the harder it is on him after I go."

"Alright. You're the dad, Papa Mac," she said with a sigh, then she gasped when she realized what she said.

"No, no, no," he said, burying his face in his hands.

"I found it! The better nickname!" she said excitedly, then lowered her voice when she remember there was a child asleep a floor below them. She then whispered, "The better nickname, Mac!"

"Only took you what… six months?" he groaned. Damn, had it really been six months since they'd blown up all those robots at Easy City Downs? "I hoped you forget about it."

"Never, like a steel trap," she said, indicating her temple. " _Papa Mac_." He grabbed her and flung her down on the bed to start tickling her.

"Papa Mac, stop!" she laughed.

"I'll stop once you stop calling me that," he said remorselessly.

"Ok, ok," she said finally, after she could no longer breathe and her side was cramping from laughing so hard. He stopped abruptly and stared at her expectantly, like at any moment he thought she'd blurt it out. She said nothing, just grinning at him sheepishly. He eventually accepted her surrender and laid down on the bed next to her.

"I have to be honest," she said, settling into the crook of his arm, "Duncan's so sweet, I thought there might have been a woman in his life."

"What, three guys can't raise a sweet kid?" Mac grinned.

"I'm not saying it's impossible," she relented.

"Well, there were two, until about a year ago," Mac explained, "Joe's sister, Penny and Owen's wife, Teresa."

"Oh," she said, "I'm sorry." She didn't ask any of the dozen more questions she had, not wanting to force Mac to relive painful memories. How did they die, who was Teresa, who was Owen? She knew Eclair, Joe and likely Penny came from Little Lamplight, but how'd they end up here? Had there been more of them at some point?

"Teresa had what Duncan had," Mac explained. She looked up at him in surprise. Mac sharing his history without provocation was relatively rare. "I'd hoped to find the cure in time… I didn't know there'd only be one dose," he said. "We were too late by months anyway."

"I'm sorry," she said.

"She was Lucy's sister," he said, and she had a hard time masking her surprise. 'Lucy' wasn't a word she heard out of his mouth much. She wanted to know everything, but he never seemed eager to share. Not that she could blame him, she could count the number of times she'd mentioned her own deceased spouse to him on… well, on three fingers.

"So if you were wondering why he's here, it's… family, at least," he explained.

"So Owen is your brother-in-law?" she asked.

"I suppose so. There's nothing really legit about marriage these days though," he said.

"You can't believe that," she said, and he raised his brow and looked down at her. "Marriage is what you make it, same as before," she shrugged, "A piece of paper stamped by the government or a priest telling you God approves isn't what makes it real."

"I agree," he said quietly, not taking his eyes off her.

"When you're ready," she said, "I want to know all about her." He gave her a small nod, then pulled her closer into him.

"I love you, Cryo."

"I love you, Mac."


	52. Not a Chicken

She slept long and hard, she thought likely due to the secure feeling of staying the night in a truly intact house for the first time in… well… two hundred and eleven years. She was also dog tired from running around so much with Duncan. She was used to adrenaline-fueled, fight-for-your-life style running around, but keeping up with a six-year-old was a whole different kind of exhausting.

She woke before MacCready, watching the adorable way he held his tongue between his lips as he slept before sneaking quietly out of the room to head downstairs. Duncan was up and at it already, and she stood on the back porch and watched him hauling water across the mutfruit field for a few minutes before he finally realized she was awake. He jumped up and down and waved excitedly at her, picking up his water pail and hauling it toward her.

"Good morning," she said as he approached.

"Morning, Cryo!" he said excitedly, plopping the bucket down on the ground at the bottom of the stairs.

"Wow kid, you're strong," she said, at first she thought she was playing along, but as she descended the stairs she realized the water pail was almost completely full. He really was strong - it must have weighed almost twenty pounds.

"You helping water the fields?" she asked.

"Yep!" he said, then knelt down and splashed some of the water on his face. He was flushed and sweating a bit, the heat of day was beginning to return as the sun crept higher in the sky. She avoided telling Duncan they were going to be leaving shortly, instead suggesting they finish their secret handshake. They were sitting cross-legged on top of the picnic table practicing the finalized ritual for the twentieth… or fiftieth… time when MacCready finally made an appearance on the back porch.

"It's time bud," he said through a yawn, lifting his suspenders back up onto his shoulders.

"Ok, dad," Duncan said glumly, but didn't argue. That simple? This kid was certainly well-behaved. "I'll get your rations," he said, climbing down off the picnic table and running into the house past MacCready, who ruffled his hair as he passed by.

"Rations?" she asked with a grin.

"He knows the drill," he said, and his smile was just a little sad. "Where's Owen?"

"Haven't seen him all morning," she said, hopping down off the picnic table to follow Mac inside. They put their armor back on, filled some water bottles, and packed up their 'rations' for the journey back. She and Duncan were showing their handshake off to Mac on the front porch when Owen appeared from the other side of the barn, dirty from working the fields.

"Off already?" he asked, wiping his sweaty brow with the back of his hand.

"He might have a fever, Owen," Mac said, taking Duncan's chin in his hand to look the kid in the face. "He's been flush and hot all morning."

"I'll keep an eye on it," Owen said reassuringly. "It was nice meeting you," he said to her.

"You too," she said, reaching out to shake his hand, "Thanks for the hospitality."

"Keep him safe," Mac said to Owen. "Tell the guys I said hi… sorry we missed them. And try to write next time there might be a radio silence - or the stress might kill me." Owen agreed apologetically and they exchanged a manly half-hug. She knelt down to face Duncan, and despite what was becoming an obvious fever, he seemed as happy and alert as ever.

"It's your turn, buddy," she said, "I'm going to need an update on what Buckshot and Bumper are up to - stat."

"You bet, boss," he said with a grin, then threw his tiny arms around her neck to hug her. She returned the hug genuinely. Though they'd really only just arrived, she felt like she'd packed in quite a bit of quality time with the kid. He was as smart, playful, sweet and kind as she'd expected, and then some. She was going to miss him.

Mac knelt down next to her and she stood up as Duncan turned toward his father. She walked away a few steps to give them space to say goodbye, but again, she couldn't not watch. It was similar to their greeting ritual, but it was as if they rewound into it, smiling to start with, then making their faces very, very serious and contemplative as they stared at each other. It was, quite seriously, the cutest. Mac leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead, then stood up to join her. They waved their goodbyes, then turned and left.

For the first few days, their walk back to Philadelphia was uneventful and by all accounts boring. She'd almost rather have had something to kill along the way. No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than she heard a scuttling noise behind her, followed by Mac yelling, "Rad chicken!" She assumed he was joking, but as she turned around to call him out on it, she saw him dashing toward her with not a drop of humor on his face. He was being stalked by the most disturbing creature she had yet to lay eyes on in the Wasteland.

The closest thing her mind could relate it to was an ostrich, but it's mass was easily three times that size, sitting on two enormous, forked and taloned feet at the end of stumped legs as thick as tree trunks. It's feathers were a sickly green tinged shade of brown, matted and molting all over the place, and it left a trail of rotted, stubby plumes in its wake. It was glaring at her with two soulless, beady black eyes, and she couldn't even count the number of beaks it had.

"Rad chicken!" he yelped again, leaping over a short stand of shrubbery to continue running toward her.

"That is NOT a chicken!" she yelled as MacCready dashed past her, grabbing her arm and pulling her around to run in the other direction. As it pursued them, it made this horrible, gurgling clucking sound that she knew she would have found hilarious if she wasn't so genuinely scared for her life. They ran in a full sprint for a few long minutes, though they couldn't seem to gain any ground on the winged, flightless, enormous… _thing_. She refused to call it a chicken. Then she remembered…

" _Gausszilla_!" she yelled, then slid to a stop behind an outcropping of trees. MacCready caught on a few long strides later, then dashed back to join her behind the cover of the shrubbery. She slung the heavy black rifle over her shoulder, aimed, held her breath, and fired.

It took three direct gauss shots to the face to put the thing down. She just barely got the final shot off in time, and it's limp, grotesquely feathered body slid to a stop at their feet. She stood and gaped at it, breathing heavily. It was horrifying, but she couldn't look away. Maybe it was going to be an eventful return trip after all.


	53. Welcome Home

They returned to find the Minutemen in an absolute tizzy. She'd barely set foot off the vertibird when Danse approached her with a series of messages that had been radioed to her while they were gone over the last week and a half. Apparently the Institute had been scouting the area around the Castle since she left, and Ronnie was certain they were planning some kind of attack. She asked Danse to keep his radio on, just in case, then she and MacCready hopped on the next available vertibird to get shuttled directly to the Castle.

She hadn't stepped four feet through the gates when she was already surrounded by officers with questions, maps, broken modules - she wasn't sure when she'd become the resident electrical engineer - requests from settlements, complaints from settlements, issues with caravan security - it was endless. It wasn't until Ronnie marched up and yelled, "Leave the goddamn woman alone, ya maggots!" that they all dispersed like startled mice.

The veteran minuteman updated them on what had been going on in the last week. Apparently, the moment they'd stepped foot out of the Commonwealth, Institute synths had started patrolling the area around the Castle. They hadn't treaded too close yet, but the regularity with which they were appearing was starting to unnerve her. Preston was aware she'd betrayed the Institute, but that information hadn't quite made it down the Minuteman pipeline yet, so Ronnie was caught off guard by their sudden interest in them.

Ronnie had brought two squads in over the last few days - one of which was Mac's mostly-trained snipers. A third squad arrived not twenty minutes after they did, led by Preston. She recognized most of those men and women as being soldiers she and Preston had trained, based out of Sanctuary. She, Mac and Ronnie walked toward the radio tower to meet up with Preston to start discussing the plan for bolstering defenses.

To start, she had one of Preston's men get on the radio to bring in any stray Minutemen from surrounding areas and settlements - with instructions to leave any stationed squads in place, in case there was a coordinated attack. Then they started discussing what other kinds of defenses they could put in place in a short amount of time. Preston pointed out that they had an abysmal selection of pulse mines and grenades in the armory, which they could at least distribute as evenly as possible. Thankfully they'd already walled over two of the three enormous breaches in the Castle's walls, so there was only one direct access point into the center courtyard. They'd set up turrets all along the walls, with three guard towers outside and two inside.

She had a quick look around, trying to formulate what the quickest and most affective way to spend their time would be. If they had a few days, they could at least finish building the scaffolding and lookout points they'd started on either side of the main breach, but the concrete would need time to set.

She was turning back toward Preston to ask his opinion on it when she heard a familiar electrical pang, one she'd been dreading hearing for months and knew was coming eventually. And on its tail came a blinding white-hot flash of light - right in the middle of the courtyard, steps from the radio beacon.

Everyone - dozens of soldiers and all four of the highest ranking Minutemen officials - stopped their tasks and just stared at it in disbelief. The synth just stood there and looked around at them all, and you could have heard a pin drop. She had grown accustomed to the strangeness of teleportation over the last few months, but it was unlikely anyone else had ever seen something just materialize out of thin air.

She sighed, then raised her gauss rifle indifferently and shot the synth in the face as the others looked on. Its mechanics sparked and shorted out as its limp body hit the dusty ground. So, they were just going to relay right on in? She really hadn't seen that one coming. She gave a calculating look around as the reality sunk in of how this fight was actually going to go. There'd be no defensive maneuvers, no coordinated efforts, no pushing their line, no keeping them sequestered outside the walls. They were just going to pop up wherever the hell they wanted and start shooting at them. It was going to be total chaos.

Everything erupted at once - Preston swept half his squad into the armory, likely intending to distribute the stash of explosives and ammo that lay within. MacCready signaled his snipers to follow him up to the balustrades while Ronnie started splitting hers up amongst the various guard towers. That left the remaining half of Preston's squad at her disposal. Then she remembered what she was thinking about before she was so rudely interrupted. Concrete.

"Soldiers!" she called out to her squad. "Get that concrete mixed and laid out on that relay point." It was a long shot, but maybe if they teleported into it, it would keep them stuck in place long enough to take them out. She grabbed two stimpacks off the workbench, tucking them in the sides of her boots for easy access, then headed back toward the radio in the center of the courtyard. She had some insider knowledge to share with the group.

She knew enough about the layout of the Institute to know they could only have so many entry points set up at once - there were only so many different relay bays after all, and they wouldn't be taking the time to enter new coordinates each time. That meant they likely only had five or six different points they would just reuse over and over again.

She flipped the switch to turn off the radio beacon, so her announcement would only be heard through the loudspeaker and not on any radio that was tuned to Radio Freedom. "Minutemen, listen up! They'll be teleporting in but there will be a limited number of relay points. Once we establish a known relay point, let's make sure it's covered by one of the squads. Shaw take the north half, Garvey & I will take the southern half. Papa Mac - use those snipers to pick up our slack." He was going to kick her ass for that later. Worth it.

"Keep your backs to the wall," she continued, "But keep an eye on the entrances in case they set a relay point somewhere on the perimeter. This won't call for standard defenses since they'll already be inside, so we need to act like we're storming this Castle ourselves. Stay sharp, we got this. They're just machines."

Everyone started to get into position, and spirits seemed high despite the fact that they'd been caught completely off guard. She headed toward the south wall to take cover behind a stack of crates, motioning for her half-squad to follow suit. She confirmed her weapon was fully loaded as she gritted her teeth at what she just said. _Just machines?_ Deadly, accurate, ruthless machines. _Storming our own Castle?_ Why did anyone even listen to her? She raised Gausszilla, took one, deep, resounding breath… then it began.


	54. Storming the Castle

It didn't take long for the other relay points to become obvious. One of them was located on top of the northern balustrade, obnoxiously close to where MacCready had set up, so his entire squad was distracted retreating to a safer location for the first few minutes of the battle. There was one near the workbench in the east, one near the armory door in the west, and one up on the wall to the south.

Within minutes, between the Institute's weapons and the number of minutemen that had laser muskets, the courtyard had exploded into unending laser chaos. The sharp, thunderous explosion of her gauss rifle was so distinct against the din of laser fire, she actually felt a little awkward every time she fired it. Between the incessant blue and red beams and the flashes of light from incoming relays, the courtyard seemed more like a rave than a battle. Except for the exploding robots and oddly distinct violin music that was still broadcasting over Radio Freedom.

After taking out a half dozen synths, she looked back to the original relay position, pleased to note that her concrete ploy was working. Synth after synth had been held up by it, and in the few minutes since the battle started, the area had become completely heaped with synth legs - broken off at the knees or hips when their bodies were shot down, but their feet remained planted in the muck.

She kept an eye on the spot as she picked off synths from the other two southern relay points… noting curiously that no additional synths seemed to be appearing at that location. She had to wonder if whatever technology the Institute used to sense if an area was clear for relay could have gotten jammed by all the pile up. Was it that simple to delay them? Could they just pile objects on top of the relay points? It seemed too good to be true - surely the sensors would just adjust the coordinates slightly one way or another until the reading was clear. After more than fifteen minutes had passed since she last saw a synth appear there, she figured the tactic might be worth a shot.

She called over one of her squadmates, Patterson, to carry a message for her. "Tell Garvey to get those crates on top of his relay point," she said.

"Pile crates on the relay point?" Patterson confirmed, clearly trying to hide his incredulity at the request. She gave him a nod that turned into a dubious shrug. Again, she had no idea what she was doing. "You got it, boss," he said with a curious grin, then dashed out of their cover toward the interior hallway so he could make his way to Preston's location in relative safety.

She continued eliminating synths, but half watched as Patterson delivered her message and Preston and his squad proceeded to stack a tower of metal crates on top of their relay point. Patterson returned ten or so minutes later with an excited response from Preston. "Colonel Garvey says, 'And that's why you're the general'," Patterson grinned.

Once they got the message out that for whatever bizarre reason, that seemed to actually work, it became less about killing synths, and more about stacking and unstacking objects from place to place as the new relay points became obvious. She wouldn't say it turned the tide of the battle, but it certainly slowed it considerably. Unfortunately, the Institute seemed to be drawing from an unending supply of soldiers, so even though the pace of the battle was more convenient for them, she was going to have to figure out some way to swing it in their favor, or they were going to get overrun regardless.

"Kincade!" she called out to one of her squadmates - a young man they'd recently promoted to sergeant.

"General?" he said as he approached, and though probably the same age as her, his flushed face and soft, youthful features made it seem like she was about to give a very dangerous task to a teenage boy.

"I need my Brotherhood radio - it's in a bag near the stairs to the western rampart. Grab it and meet me inside, near the eastern doorway."

"Copy!" he said, then about-faced and took off down the hall behind her. He certainly had none of the reservations a teenager might. This relay-blocking ploy must have pissed them off, because instead of older generation synths, coursers were starting to appear more and more frequently. She saw one pop up in a new relay point, just a few feet behind Ronnie. The woman swung her musket into its face and knocked it off its feet, but not before it shot her in the stomach.

"Shit," she cursed as she watched Ronnie falling to the ground next to the courser. She ducked into cover to reload her rifle as another synth marched toward her, unloading its weapon at her. "Shit, shit, shit." She popped back up, shot it in its stupid robot face, then yelled, "Cover me!" to absolutely no one in particular. Thankfully, someone listened because she didn't hesitate as she dashed across the courtyard toward where Ronnie had fallen. Luckily, she was able to shoot the courser in the back of the head before he even got back up, and it instantly killed him. She considered herself relatively strong, but it must have been the adrenaline that allowed her to scoop Ronnie up like she weighed basically nothing and carry her into the relative safety of the armory.

She set the colonel down in the corner, grabbed one of the stimpacks she'd stuck into her boots and injected it into the woman's stomach. Ronnie was worse off than she thought, however. She must have gotten hit again a few times after the original shot to the gut. She found herself unable to decide whether to use the second stimpack on the wound on her arm or leg, but didn't have to make the final call when Ronnie grabbed it out of her hand and stuck it in her own leg. She felt some relief as the bleeding slowed, but there wasn't much more she was going to be able to do for her in the short term.

"I'm sorry Ron," she said as she loaded her musket for her.

"I'm fine, General," she insisted, "Scratches, really."

"That's the first time you've called me General."

"Go out there and prove you've earned it," she said, coughing a bit, then trying to prop herself up better in the corner. "Go now, they need you!" Ronnie demanded.

She helped position her gun in her hands in such a way that she could fire it at the door and at least try and protect herself if she needed to. Then she headed back out into the fray, grabbing two remaining pulse mines that sat on the metal shelving on her way out the door. She snuck her way back along the south wall and to the eastern doorway she had instructed Kincade to meet her at.

She tossed one of the pulse mines down on a new relay point just outside the door - which was nicely delineated by the scorched dirt the previous relays had caused. Moments later a synth appeared, setting off the mine and flying impressively toward the workbench. She considered finishing it off with a shot to the chest, but quickly realized the explosion had eliminated the need. She tossed the last mine down on the relay point just as Kincade appeared with her radio. She thanked him and flipped it on.

"Danse!" she called into the radio.

"Go for Danse," he replied after a few seconds.

"I can literally see the Prydwen from here, so I'm hoping you can give me a short and sweet ETA for backup," she said. "The Institute's hitting the Castle as we speak."

"Copy that, soldier, wheels up in five," he affirmed. Thank God. She tossed the radio aside and turned back to Kincade just as she heard a synth relay go off… and then she heard the pulse mine she'd just placed taking care of it for her.

"We still have a full squad at Andrew Station?" she asked the sergeant. Months ago they'd set up a small settlement for soldiers in the old metro station - as the raiders that repeatedly infested the place were causing problems for settlers and caravans trying to get to or from the Castle.

"Yes, General!" he affirmed.

"Get on that radio and get them down here, stat - flanking, sniping procedures, they know the drill," she said, when suddenly a beam of light flashed in the doorway behind her, indicating the arrival of yet another synth just outside. She stood up, stepped into the doorway, shot the synth in the face, then crouched back down to face Kincade.

"Yes, General!" he said, looking equal measures impressed and terrified by her casual execution of the robot. He peaked around the stone doorway to look out into the mess of laser gunfire that criss-crossed the courtyard in his path toward the radio beacon.

"I'll cover you!" she promised, and he must have believed her because he immediately dashed out into the fray. She absentmindedly picked off any assailant that looked like they were going to give Kincade trouble as she considered what she just said. _They knew the drill?_ Not so much. They should know what she meant by that statement, in theory, but they'd never endured an assault even remotely like this one before. They were all flying by the seat of their pants - including her. Especially her.

But the synths wouldn't be expecting shots from the other direction, and even if they did, it would at least split their attention enough to give them an edge. She had to hope that between that and the Brotherhood, it would be enough.


	55. War

She took a deep breath and checked the clock on her Pip-Boy. It would take the squad at Andrew Station about fifteen minutes to mobilize and make the trek east, and the Brotherhood would be there any minute as well. They could easily hold out until then… they had to.

She was surprised to note that almost an hour had passed already… apparently time flies when you're fighting for your life. She'd been involved in enough combat over the last year to understand that kind of longevity in a battle was common, particularly if it involved any significant number of people. An encounter of this scale could easily last hours, particularly if their forces were equally matched. She had not a clue in the world if they were, however, because instead of marching up with their allotted number of troops, the damn synths just kept relaying in at random points, at random times. It could literally never end.

She continued covering the relay point outside the eastern doorway until her squad got enough of a reprieve to start moving crates onto the spot. There was a lull in the fighting then, and she regrouped with Kincade, Patterson and the other three minutemen that made up her half-squad behind their original cover along the south wall. She'd just finished feeding Gausszilla more rounds when she heard the heartwarming sound of vertibird choppers.

The aircraft did a full sweep of the perimeter, unloading both miniguns into the synths that had begun to overtake the balustrades. She knew it was pointless, but she couldn't help but feel dismayed that from an outside vantage point, it probably looked like the Brotherhood was attacking the Minutemen.

The vertibird finished its initial sweep and then hovered over the courtyard long enough to let Danse jump out. He hit the ground just south of the radio tower, like it was no big deal at all to drop into the middle of a heavy firefight. Danse wasn't the only one that leapt from the aircraft, however, three more knights dropped in after him. The paladin ignored a few random laser pings as they flashed across his power armor, and the knights that followed split off in different directions to help cover each area of the courtyard. Danse mostly ignored the firefight, other than to turn and shoot one approaching synth in the head before crouching down into cover next to her and giving her a very out of character smile.

"Another two squads incoming," he said.

"I just meant you!" she said incredulously.

"I know," he replied. "Clearly I wasn't wrong in assuming you needed more than that."

"Hey, we're holding our own," she said defensively. "Did you know you can just stack shit on top of a relay point and it stops them from using it?"

"I did not," he said, clearly trying to hide the fact that he was impressed behind a facade of total indifference.

"Well now you do. You're welcome," she said haughtily, but what she was really thinking was… now if only we could just stack shit _everywhere_ , that fact might actually mean something useful, in the long term at least.

The timeliness of the Brotherhood's arrival, compounded by the flanking maneuver that the squad from Andrew Station pulled off, caused the battle to wind down relatively quickly after that. The relay points became fewer and fewer, and they were sending less and less troops through over the course of the next thirty minutes. They all sat in silence behind cover for a long time after that, waiting to see if it was truly over… and after the longest fifteen minutes of her life, they had to assume they'd won the day.

The dust hadn't even had a chance to settle before MacCready was standing in front of her, hands on his hips in annoyance.

"I cannot believe you called me that over the radio," he said. She laughed - she'd forgotten all about that. Still worth it.

"It was just the loudspeaker, Pap- " she started, but he'd reached up and clamped his fingers over her lips to stop her from continuing. Danse just stood there and watched them, entirely too amused.

"I feel like I missed something good," the paladin grinned.

"We handled that well, General," Preston said as he approached from across the courtyard, giving Mac a strange look as he released her face from his grasp. He was clearly impressed by how smoothly they'd all been able to work together, and to be honest, she was as well. They could train troops day in and day out for the rest of their lives, but until they got some real experience under their belts, there'd be no way to know if they'd sink or swim.

MacCready and Danse began to shoot the shit, in a manner that made her somewhat bewildered, and she stepped away to start issuing orders for the clean up process. She instructed her squad to set up an area to tend to the wounded, and asked Kincade to go get Ronnie out of the armory. Patterson approached her with the numbers - seven dead, ten wounded. Seven dead… dammit. That's when Preston pulled her aside, intent on having a serious conversation.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, General?" he asked.

"That if they wanted a war, they screwed with the right people?" she said fervently, and he nodded his agreement. It was one thing to go after her personally, it was another thing to kill innocent men and women while trying to destroy the one decent thing she'd helped create over the last year - and one of the very few opportunities the Commonwealth had for a brighter future.

"Our troops can be ready for a response - soon," Preston encouraged. "I wish it didn't have to be that way - but they're forcing our hand. If we don't get into an offensive position, we'll just be sitting ducks until they figure out a way to wipe us out."

"I agree, but we need a way in," she reminded him. "I'm just guessing here, but they probably revoked my access," she said, indicating her Pip-Boy.

"I've had Sturges working on decrypting that holotape since you got back from Mass Fusion," he said. She was a little shocked - Preston utilizing espionage… that was just a little bit diabolical, which wasn't in her friend's nature. But Preston wasn't messing around when it came to the Minutemen, and she knew he was willing to do anything to protect what they'd created.

"He's having trouble, but I know he'll crack it soon. There has to be something on it that will help us find a way in."

"Alright, good," she sighed, and she hoped he was right, because she didn't have a single other lead to offer.

"In the mean time, we need to get the Castle back in working order and bolster our defenses in all major settlements. We don't know where they might strike next," Preston cautioned. She agreed, then asked him to gather all the officers for a meeting inside, it was time they laid out some specific protocols now that the Institute was a confirmed enemy. They had enough forces and bright, loyal officers, she knew she could now issue both short and long term plans and trust that they would be executed faithfully.

She realized as she headed inside that she was clenching her fists. She knew minutemen would die in this battle, but she didn't realize how angry it would make her. Sure, it could be argued she'd started the whole thing by betraying Father and stealing the agitator out from under him - but only synths had died in that siege. Attacking the Castle served no purpose for him - they had nothing he needed or wanted. It was pointless. Father had killed innocent soldiers with no goal in mind other than revenge.

So he needed to be stopped, once and for all, and if an all out war is what he wanted, that's what he was going to get.


	56. Fortifications

Despite the fact that they'd won the battle, the Castle was more or less down for the count as a result. She was mad at herself for managing to create a situation in which the Minutemen had to worry about scrambling to hole up and defend themselves instead of being able to get out in the field, helping settlers across the Commonwealth get on their feet. That was their purpose after all. But she'd admired Preston's gumption in suggesting they find a way back into the Institute to take them down for good. Sitting back on the defensive wasn't her style, after all. The Institute might not have a door to kick down, but she knew if Sturges had found her a way in once, he'd be able to do it again.

If she were in Father's position, Sanctuary would be the next place she'd strike - with their forces scattered and focused on repairing their other main hub. She wasn't sure how much of a tactician he was, but to be safe she decided to send MacCready ahead to Sanctuary with a full squad and instructions to start on defensive projects immediately. With Ronnie down for the count, she and Preston were going to stay at the Castle for the time being to coordinate recovery efforts and to finish up defensives of their own - including finally closing off the remaining breeched wall and fitting it with a proper gate. Once Ronnie was recovered, they would be able to head back to Sanctuary to help with the efforts there.

Despite not wanting the title, Mac certainly looked like an officer as he led the squad of men and women through the crumbling, breeched wall. He was barking orders about who was on point and who should take flank, and that the looting on their journey would be minimal and restricted to ammo and firearms, and if a single one of them called him _Papa_ again, he'd personally feed them to the next yao gaui, deathclaw, or super mutant hoard they encountered. She had tried to explain to him that they'd have something more formal to call him if he'd just accept a damn officer title already, but he still wasn't having it. His leadership instincts were solid, despite how much he modest he was about it.

She wished she could feel the same about her own management skills. When she and Preston first met, she assumed 'general' was just a cute nickname he was assigning her - ironic almost. Like, hey - there's exactly two of us, so you be the general, _ha ha ha_. But now, as she watched Mac march away with a dozen soldiers, and there were still two dozen running around the Castle - and dozens more in settlements all throughout the Commonwealth - she was starting to feel the pressure of commanding such a significant force.

It was easy in battle, her instincts kicked in and she felt like she knew what she was doing. But whenever she had some breathing room, she felt that sharp guilty stab in the pit of her stomach that reminded her she wasn't in any way qualified for this and she was probably going to get them all killed.

It took four long weeks to get Ronnie and the Castle back into working order. At first they focused on resupplying. They brought meat and vegetables in from Abernathy Farm, she had Kincade schedule daily, sweeping loot runs that resulted in an influx of firearms and ammo, and she bought an entire pallet of pulse mines and grenades from the Brotherhood for next to nothing.

In addition to repairs, they bolstered their defenses with half a dozen laser turrets and she started training a handful of interested soldiers on how to repair or reconfigure circuit boards for turrets and traps. She had no reason pre-war to deal with electronics in any way, but it was a skill she'd picked up on quickly after she'd thawed out. She seemed to have a knack for it - the components and wiring just made sense to her - but despite that fact, whenever she taught it to someone else, she couldn't help but feel like she had no idea what she was doing. She was certain there were technical names for all the parts she was describing to them, but she just used things like 'small black knobby bit' and 'blue wire that runs next to the black wire'.

They spent entirely too much time trying to figure out what to do with the disturbing synth leg statute they'd inadvertently created by filling one of the relay points with concrete. Dismantling it would take time, and it was too heavy to haul out and dump into the ocean without a half dozen or so brahmin to pull it. In the end, Preston suggested they hang a plaque on it that said, 'To those who gave their lives storming the Castle - September 22, 2288'. A memorialization to those who died... couldn't have been more perfect, and so very _Preston_.

To their surprise, new recruits started coming out of the woodwork as news of the Institute's attack and the Minutemen's subsequent victory spread. The people of the Commonwealth wanted to fight back, and if the Minutemen were the ones doing it, then they wanted to join the cause. Since Ronnie wasn't quite recovered, she sent Preston ahead to Sanctuary with the new soldiers and a load of supplies she'd purchased from the Brotherhood. He'd get them started on training with Mac, and she'd follow as soon as Ronnie felt ready.

Nick came to stay for a while, and though not very military-minded, he would regale the troops with dramatic stories of pre-war detective shenanigans, which she felt did wonders for morale. It did wonders for her own morale to have him there too - she was surprised at how much she had to catch him up on since she'd last been in Diamond City. He gave her a lot of grief about MacCready 'taking her home to meet the family' and he liked pointing out that he'd 'called it'.

It made her blush and roll her eyes at him, but it also made her chest hurt because she missed Mac in a way she wasn't used to having to deal with. They hadn't been apart for this long since they met - and though they had been able to speak over the radio a handful of times, it didn't really do much in the way of alleviating her longing to see him again.

Ronnie was able to get out of bed and start moving around again shortly after Preston left, about three weeks after the battle. She had a limp now that made her seem even more crotchety than she had before. It only took her one more week before she started insisting that she had it under control, and she should 'get the damn hell out of her hair' and she didn't want to see her 'ugly mug' this far east again for a long time. She did keep calling her 'general', at least. She still felt nervous about leaving the injured veteran, but she was more than ready to head back home - back to Sanctuary and back to Mac.


	57. Thaw Day

Upon her return to Sanctuary, she found herself standing on the steps of The Foundation, dozens of settlers and minutemen - Preston, MacCready, Sturges, Kincade and Patterson among them - congregating around the bar with drinks in their hands. It was dusk and the Christmas lights were on, that catchy Uranium Fever song was playing lightly on the radio, and the ambience of the makeshift bar was at its best. Nick had accompanied her on the trek from the Castle, and he stood hovering over her shoulder with a strange grin on his face. She looked back at him questioningly, but could glean nothing useful from his expression. She turned back to have a better look at MacCready and Preston, who stood beaming at her from the other side of the bar, behind some kind of… cake.

"Cut them some slack," Nick whispered in her ear. "They had to make it out of Cram." Now it made sense as to why she was woken up this morning by Ronnie pulling her physically out of bed, with two minutemen over her shoulder, already packing her bags for her. This was some kind of… surprise party.

Nick gave her a motivating pat on the back, then led her up closer to the bar to have a better look at… whatever it was. She was pretty sure that in all of human history, nothing before had ever been at once such intense degrees of both sweet and terrifying. It was over a foot tall and twice as wide, and was leaning heavily to one side in an unnatural manner. It was a horrible shade of purple-brown, though it appeared to be coated in some kind of thin... clear... icing? It was more or less the kind of confection she'd imagine would surface at a super mutant's birthday party. She was actually shocked that human hands had made it.

"Wow, guys," she squeaked, unable to control the high pitch of her voice as she tried not to grimace. "What's this for?"

"Happy one year of being thawed out, General," Preston announced. She looked at her Pip-Boy… damn, it really was the end of October already. Not that the months held much significance anymore, other than to serve as an indication of how good you were at keeping yourself alive. As she stepped closer she noticed the cake seemed… frozen. She gave Nick a nervous look, but he ignored her imploring, so she turned back to Mac and Preston.

"We froze it," Mac grinned, "With the Cryolator." She tried not to vocalize her extreme relief. If they'd frozen it with that beast of a weapon, there was no way she'd be able to eat it. Then she processed what he really said.

"You used that thing?" she asked incredulously.

"Yep, it works!" he announced with a strained grin, like he was really hoping she didn't pull him across the bar by his collar and pummel him.

"Jes- …Mac, that thing was experimental… and built by _Vault-Tec_. You could have frozen your own hands off!" she scolded. He held up his hands and turned them over a few times to show her.

"It was chilly, not going to lie, but see? Hands still here," he said, still grinning. They were being so adorably proud of themselves she couldn't stay mad.

"Thanks, guys, you really shouldn't have," she said.

"To our General!" Preston announced, and the settlers that had gathered around turned their attention toward him. "Under whose unwavering leadership, the Minutemen have become a force to be reckoned with!"

The crowd raised their glasses, clinking them together in a toast. Nick appeared at her side with a glass of what appeared to be whisky. She took the drink thankfully and raised it back at them deferentially, and she felt herself blushing considerably. She wasn't overly fond of having so much attention pointed at her. Thankfully, that seemed to cue the crowd that it was time to celebrate, as someone cranked the radio up and everyone started splitting off into smaller groups again. Mac rounded the bar and picked her up in a bear hug, giving her a sloppy kiss on the cheek before setting her back down.

"I mean, come on, Cryo," he said, keeping his arms wrapped around her but turning to face her, "What was the point of you spending three hours breaking the lock on that if you didn't want me to use it to freeze a happy Thaw Day cake for you?" Honestly, she'd been so diligent about releasing the weapon simply because she just wanted to feel like she was taking something from Vault-Tec, however pointless.

"Thaw Day? That's not… not a thing," she said shaking her head.

"Like you don't deserve your own da- … darn… holiday," he said sweetly. She kissed him as a reward, then found she didn't really feel all that keen to stop. They had spent almost no time apart since they met, other than the Glowing Sea incident, and it had been a full month since they'd parted ways at the Castle. Now she wanted to make up for lost time…

Damn, had he always smelled so good? Like leather and fire and sweat and whisky and… It was getting intense, but they managed to realize it and break the embrace as they blushed at one another… they were in a public venue after all. Though technically they were The Foundation's proprietors, kicking everyone out so they could make out on the bar would sort of just be awkward since it had no walls. Mac excused himself to go make her another drink, so she slammed back the rest of the whisky to shake off the exhilaration the kiss had caused, then set the empty glass on the bar.

She heard someone behind her clear his throat, then say, "Happy Thaw Day, soldier. Still not sure how that became a thing, but I think I approve."

The voice sounded familiar, but she couldn't place it as she turned to look at the man. He was maybe in his early thirties with a weathered face beyond his years. He had black hair, light brown eyes and sported a short, neatly trimmed beard-

"Oh my God- " she said in total shock as she realized who it was. Danse blushed. "Holy shi- … sorry, damn," she said, trying to recover but doing an epically bad job of it. So… there really _was_ a man shaped body under all that power armor, huh? Though she managed to stop stuttering, she couldn't stop herself from gaping at him as she took in the strange sight - similar to how she'd first felt when watching Strong try to pour himself a cup of tea. Danse… in pants. Danse… in a t-shirt?

"Sorry," she said, then cleared her throat and reset herself. "Hi Danse! It's great to see you."

"You too," he said with an amused look.

"Hey Danse," MacCready said casually, returning with her drink and slipping an arm around her waist. "I like the look, it's kind of nice to not have to get a neck cramp just to speak to you."

"Nice, Mac," she said admonishingly. To her surprise, Danse laughed.

"I have to agree, looking down at you all tends to put a crimp in my back," he said lightly, holding his low back as if to point out the spot. Mac laughed, not seeming at all surprised by Danse's joke. She gave a disbelieving, pathetic half-laugh as she looked between the two, unable to hide her clear shock. What kind of strange Twilight Zone had she stumbled back into…?

"Oh, before I forget," Danse said, then dug in his pocket and produced two envelopes, handing one to each of them. "Mail call."

"Thanks, Danse," she smiled gratefully and the paladin lifted his glass toward them, then turned away to talk to Preston. She felt Mac glaring at her as she gawked at the paladin as he walked away, still not used to the sight of him without the enormous armor.

"Hey, eyes up here," Mac said admonishingly, then gave her a playful shove.

"Sorry, it's just so weird," she said, returning her look to the envelope she'd received, which was suspiciously thick. Outside it had 'Happy Thaw Day CRYO!' written on it, and shapes that looked like balloons and party hats covering the entire thing, though they'd smudged some in transport. She exchanged a 'so cute it hurts' grin with Mac, then opened it.

The first page said 'It's your Thaw Day!' at the top and had a drawing of a lady wearing a vault suit with a puddle of water on the ground around her, giving a thumbs up. She had a badass scar on her cheek, a shotgun in her hand, and a machete or sword of some kind strapped to her back.

He'd written 'I don't know what Thaw Day means, but dad said you'd like it if I made you a card. I couldn't decide so I made you six. HAPPY THAW DAY!' She flipped through the pages, each a different rendition of what he thought Thaw Day might mean. How could this kid be so damn sweet?

She and Mac separated to entertain different groups - mostly to keep the pile up of people that wanted to talk to her at bay. More and more familiar faces began to show up, and she found herself being reminded of what her graduation party had been like. It was a constant onslaught of people who had come specifically to see you, which left you without a second to think, nevertheless eat or drink. At least Dogmeat was enjoying himself - he was going absolutely _nuts_ from all the attention.

Cait rolled in with Hancock, Ellie showed up with an adorable gift wrapped neatly in Silver Shroud comics, and both Deacon and Tinker Tom arrived with gifts of ammo in hand - electromagnetic cartridges for Gausszilla. They both got hugs.

Strong even stomped in along with Rex, and everyone about crapped their pants until she held up a hand to signal restraint. He then announced, loudly, "Strong happy for boss on Thaw Day!" then shoved a gift at her in the form of a mostly intact molerat carcass. She accepted with tempered thanks, then passed it off to Preston to dispose of.

She was starting to become worried about where all these additional people were going to sleep - she was assuming they weren't all going to walk back downtown in the middle of the night. Preston, however, brought her a plate of food and another drink, then reassured her they'd already set up the bottom floor of the riverside building with extra mattresses. Then she had good, long internal laugh at imagining exactly how _that_ slumber party was going go.

Everyone seemed impressed by the fortifications they had noticed on their way into town - projects Mac had either completed or started work on in the last month since the incidents at the Castle. They'd started building a twelve foot wall all around the city, starting at the boardwalk and heading toward the bridge - and eventually it would encompass the entire settlement. He'd also completed three legit, scout-style guard towers - two along the river and one on the northwest side of town, behind her old house.

For the rest of the evening, she and Mac were good hosts, standing on opposite sides of The Foundation, each entertaining a different group of people, but they couldn't stop looking over at one another to blush, smile or generally be smitten. Though she appreciated the sentiment of everyone being excited that she'd thawed out a year ago, all she really wanted was to get that man back up to her room.


	58. Reconvene

A storm had rolled in causing the party to wrap up a little sooner than expected. Though when she checked the clock on her Pip-Boy as she took it off to set it on the nightstand, she was surprised that it was already three in the morning. She dumped her armor on top of the dresser and walked over to the porch overlooking the river. The night was a special kind of pitch dark, and she couldn't even see the sheets of rain the storm was dumping across the valley except when lightning flashed across the sky impressively.

Mac came rushing inside, shutting the door securely behind him as he tried to shake off the rain. He wrung his hat out and tossed it on the ground as he slipped off his boots. He had helped Preston and a few others shuttle everything from the party indoors before the rain got too bad. She pretended like she wasn't watching as he took off most of his wet clothing, save his pants.

When he pulled his shirt off, she immediately noticed the scar on his side from the incidents at Easy City Downs. She used to just feel terrible whenever she'd see one of the scars he'd earned, caused by something she'd done. Now, however, she found the evidence of their history together… strangely sexy. Like getting a tattoo that said 'Cryo Forever', but way more badass. She tried to seem casual as she turned to look back outside as he suddenly crossed toward her to grab a towel and wipe his wet hair down.

"Wanna dance?" Mac asked suddenly as a crack of thunder nearby shook the walls. He stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, kissing the side of her neck lightly. It sent shivers up and down her spine.

"Nah," she said casually, then turned to kiss him on the lips. Any pretense they may have had for acting civil went straight out the window. He had her pressed against the wall and they were ripping at each other's clothing within seconds. Mac didn't have much left on, but she managed to get the button of his pants undone in the same amount of time it took him to toss her shirt and bra across the room and unbutton her own pants.

Not only had they not seen each other for a month, it'd been even longer since they had any true alone time - having spent the better part of the two weeks before the Castle incident traveling to and from D.C.. She had missed Mac a ton while she was gone, but she hadn't realized how much she'd missed this… touching him, getting close, proving her affections in the kind of way you could only accomplish with your shirts off.

He switched his arms to underneath her own so he could wrap them around her back and lift her up, just high enough to carry her toward the bed. He set her back down, then to her surprise, shoved her slightly so she'd fall back onto the mattress. Before she knew it, he'd slid her pants down the rest of the way and discarded them. He knelt at the foot of the bed and leaned over her as she laid back, running his tongue down her stomach, into her navel, eventually landing on her hip.

She about lost her shit as he nibbled lightly on the soft skin just inside her hip bone, but then he headed even farther down and she really lost all track of time and space. They'd tried plenty of different things over the last few months, including renditions of this - all of which could have been described at their most mundane as intensely pleasurable. This, however, was a whole new kind of awesome. She had to wonder what caused this sudden voraciousness in him, but gave up on thinking as soon as he decided to use his fingers as well.

It was too good and she found herself needing him to be closer. He had to be inside of her, now, and she wasn't going to take no for an answer. She grabbed a fistful of his hair to pull his face back up to hers, and he took the hint, climbing up onto the bed as she used a foot to slide his pants off the rest of the way. He paused briefly as he hovered over her, though she clawed at his neck and shoulders to entice him to continue. She didn't think she was going to be able to take it another second.

"I missed you," he said breathily.

"I love you," she said.

"I love y-" he tried to respond but she leaned up to lock his lips in hers fiercely and he gave up any pretense he may have had at trying to create a sweet moment amidst all the carnality. He thrust down into her and she felt like her skin was on fire as her blood turned hot and she could feel it rushing through every inch of her. She pulled her nails down his back and after a few refined thrusts, he scooped her up and got his own legs under her so they were both sitting up, and she was straddling him and it felt so… exactly right.

He continued the rhythm, slow, steady but relentless. She had no real control, he'd taken the reins and she was just fine with that because she knew he'd get the job done, he always did. The moment came before she realized what was even happening, the edges of her vision brightening as she felt the pressure release and she couldn't not vocalize her extreme enthusiasm at the intensity. She only realized once she was able to breathe again that he'd finished right along with her, and they melted away from each other and into two, super-heated puddles onto the bed.

They laid side-by-side for a few long minutes, breathing heavily, surprised by their own tenacity and how very… excellent… that had been, despite being short-lived. She was confused at first when she saw he'd lifted his arm up into the air above himself, palm flat toward her. But yeah, it deserved that. She lifted her hand to complete the high-five, then they curled up together and fell asleep as the thunder and lightning crackled outside.


	59. Lucy

When she woke up, MacCready was kneeling at the side of the bed, looking down at his folded hands as one might do when paying their respects to the dead. She gave a sweeping glance around the room, confused by his contemplative state. He looked up when he noticed she was awake, wiping a tired look off his face before replacing it with a welcoming smile.

"Morning," he said. She began to stretch and yawn, but was interrupted as he stood up to climb back into bed with her. She shuffled over to make room and they laid face-to-face on their sides and looked at each other.

"I told you how she died," he said seriously. She was tired and still wiping the sleep out her eyes, so at first she couldn't process what he could have possibly meant by that. "But I never told you how she lived."

It took her a second to catch on, for her brain to finally wake up. Lucy. She said nothing, just looked him seriously in the eye and waited for whatever he was ready to tell her.

"She was sweet and kind. She was an amazing mother, a natural," he said, his look distant as he recalled the memories. "She was maternal and nurturing and… warm. But not… protective. Never fierce. She was a pure soul." He was saying it like it was a negative, and she wasn't sure how to react. She was surprised when he said, disappointedly, "She never belonged in this shit world."

She swallowed as his brow creased and he added, "I know it sounds harsh. I don't mean it that way. She just… this whole situation, this way of life… it wasn't in her nature. She couldn't fight, she couldn't kill… she couldn't see all the savage creatures in the world for anything other than animals protecting their territory or their young. She thought slavers were redeemable. She felt bad for feral ghouls. On multiple occasions I caught her trying to leave food for them."

Damn. There were a lot of different 'Lucys' she'd imagined in her mind, but this wasn't one of them.

"I knew how impractical it was," he continued, "But I couldn't not love her for it. I know it makes her sound irrational, but it wasn't that way. She was just too _good_ for her own damn good. The fact that she was born now and not three hundred years ago was just… unfair. She would have thrived if she'd got to live that kind of existence. She would have been an example, she'd of been a fu- … a damn saint.

"She just couldn't comprehend all this terrible sh-… stuff, not in the same way I did, at least. I figured that's why she was drawn to me, and me to her. She needed someone that was willing to destroy anything and everything in his path, and… I needed someone that would make me realize I couldn't keep that up forever without losing myself completely.

"And then came Duncan… and he was this _perfect_ divine creature that had resulted from two opposite forces who'd somehow found each other. He was my own personal messiah. Everything changed after that - who I was, who she was, who we had to be as a family. But then I had two defenseless people dependent on me to protect them, and things got really hard.

"That's why I never wanted Duncan here, with me… in constant danger. I'm afraid he's too much like his mother… that he can't or won't protect himself. But I don't know if that's the right thing to do. I feel like I'm keeping him secluded from reality."

She sighed, because he wasn't wrong. But the poor kid was only six going on seven. When was the right time to stick a pistol in their hands and throw them into the fray?

"It's not wrong, it's just… being a parent," she said. "You want to protect him and let him be a kid for as long as you can. That kind of innocence is rare, it's understandable if you want him to be like her in that way."

"I do, but I don't. I look at him, how much he reminds me of Lucy, and it fills me with hope and dread equally, and I don't know which is right. As much as I want him to be that way, to look at the world in a positive light and not for the total shit show it is - I can't forget how she died, how pointless it was, how stupid we were. And if he isn't strong, if I don't force him to see the world for what it really is… that could happen to him too."

"How… did it happen?" she asked. She knew some very vague facts about how she died - feral ghouls, caught off guard, metro tunnel - but he'd never outlined the specifics for her.

"After Duncan was born we moved around a lot, which, with a baby is… so hard. We were looking for her sister and traveling around chasing lead after lead. Lucy refused to stop looking, despite how many times Duncan's cries acted like a homing beacon for raiders or mutants or ferals. We survived all that though, it was… in the calm that it happened.

"We were just sitting in a metro car, eating dinner. Duncan was quiet and happy, he'd just started to crawl for the first time. And it happened just like that… she was gone before I even knew the ghouls were on us. I don't know how long I sat there and stared before I realized that Duncan was just lying on the ground between us gargling happily… Eventually my instincts kicked in. I just grabbed Duncan and ran and I didn't look back."

She kissed his forehead because she couldn't form any kind of words, not with the heavy lump she had in her throat, but she felt like she needed to react somehow. He kissed her cheek in response, then waited for her to look him in the eye again before continuing.

"I found Teresa and Owen the very next day," he said. "If we could have held on one day longer, we would have found them… we could have gotten the hell out of the city, and she might have had a chance. Out on a farm like the one we found? She could have survived out there."

"I'm sorry, Mac," she said.

"It was a mistake, not forcing her to leave the city, and I'll always regret that," he said, his voice adjusting from wavering to resolute. "But I can't take it back. I just want you to know… I learned from it. I know how to fight for my family now. I won't be caught off guard, I won't panic, and I won't hesitate."

"I know that," she said quietly, then wrapped her arms around his head as he buried his face into her neck. "I know."


	60. Buddy

"I went to the. Zoo, the other day," the robot croaked. "The only animal. They had, was a dog." She just grinned and stared at it expectantly, waiting for it to continue. "It, was a… shitzu."

"Oh… _my God_ ," she said, drumming her fingers together maniacally. She and Mac were in the basement of The Shamrock Taphouse and they'd just found the single best piece of loot the Commonwealth had to offer.

The. Best.

"Mac - it makes beer," she said excitedly, continuing to stare at the robot. "And jokes. Beer _and_ jokes."

"Cold. Beer," the robot corrected her. She turned slowly to stare at Mac with wide eyes.

" _Cold_ beer!" she said. He was grinning, but she knew it was at her reaction and not by what should have been unadulterated excitement at their find.

"Shall I continue. To Hotel. Rexford?" it asked.

"Oh, _hell_ no," she said, turning back to it. "I'm keeping you."

"Very. Well," the robot agreed. She and Mac then escorted the very slow robot back to Sanctuary, but every agonizing second was worth it, because of _cold beer_.

It had been almost three weeks since Thaw Day and Sturges had still had no luck decrypting the holotape. They had kept busy, however, training more minutemen and fortifying both the Castle and Sanctuary. At the Castle, Ronnie had completed reconstructing the final breach and already started working on taller, more fortified guard towers facing each front. In Sanctuary they'd finished the wall along the river and a gate at the bridge, and they were starting to get the wall wrapped around to the west and east.

She, Mac and Preston spent a good deal of time standing around the war table in Sanctuary, working on more long-term plans for the Minutemen. One of their more important decisions was finally deciding which settlement made the most sense to fortify next. Preston thought Sunshine Tidings, due to the ample land for farming, which he thought needed to be a major focus as their numbers grew. She thought either Kingsport or the cottage land on the coast would be best, as it'd help them gain a foothold to head even farther north in the future. Mac thought County Crossing, as their central location on a heavily travelled route along the coast put them constantly on the defensive. They were continually having to reinforce the eight man squad that was permanently stationed there with units from other settlements nearby. They eventually agreed with Mac - as keeping a hold on such a large, centralized location at a time of constant trepidation seemed the soundest argument.

When early November had arrived, she'd remembered that Mac had told her months ago that was when he thought his birthday might be. She had insisted on making a celebration out of it, planning a day long bar-crawl that led from The Dugout Inn to the Colonial Taphouse, then to The Third Rail and then a long, alcohol and explosive-filled trek back north to The Foundation. Way more people than she expected attended - Nick, Ellie, Piper, Cait, Hancock, Preston, Sturges, _Jun_ even came along, which shocked her beyond belief. The guy had been so depressed for the last year and a half, she was beginning to think he'd never get out of his funk.

A slew of Minutemen attended as well, including Sergeant Kincade and Patterson, who they also recently promoted to sergeant. Mac's entire squad of snipers came, and the way they gave him grief about _everything_ made her endlessly happy. Danse even made an appearance while they were downtown, affording Mac a rough pat on the shoulder saying, "One more year of surviving the Commonwealth is worthy of celebration, Recruit."

She was certain by the way she kept catching Mac looking at her with thankful, disbelieving eyes that no one had ever made a big deal out of his birthday before. Although for the most part, he shied away from all the attention. After the bar crawl she insisted on making a week of it, since they didn't really know which day was his actual birthday. She and Mac stuck to the activities he liked best, like drinking, sharpshooting, and drinking while sharpshooting. But to be honest, they mostly just spent a lot of time in bed.

The whole celebration had caused him to want to know when her birthday was, but she was reluctant to tell him, as she didn't want to give him another occasion to surprise her with Cram cake. She eventually relented and told him the date in early April, and she disliked the way she could sense his 'creative wheels' begin to turn as he thought about how he'd enact his birthday revenge.

After that they focused on more responsible endeavors again, training minutemen in droves. They were promoting new officers at such a rate, she was able to delegate more and more of her responsibilities every day. This left them open to do stupid things again, like find awesome beer-brewing robots in the basements of pubs.

Upon their return from acquiring 'Buddy', Mac headed straight to their room to write a letter to Duncan. She set Buddy up at The Foundation with instructions to produce and distribute beer to patrons as frequently as possible. Preston returned from a supply run just as Buddy was serving his first customer, an overly amused Sturges.

She hadn't seen much of the mechanic over the last few weeks, as he worked diligently day and night on decrypting the holotype she'd acquired from the Institute. She had insisted he step away for just a few minutes to take note of her new prize. She watched as the robot passed Sturges a beer, then asked if he wanted a joke. He laughed and agreed.

"I was banned. From the airport, last week. Apparently. Security doesn't. Like it when you, call. Shotgun, while boarding a plane."

Sturges grinned fully, turning to her and raising his beer, "Boss, this is the best thing you've done for the Commonwealth so far."

She turned to Preston as he approached cautiously, grinning at him proudly, "We hired a bartender." He stared at the robot for a few long moments, then gave a resigned shrug, like he could expect no less from her. Carla was standing nearby, looking on like she could not have cared less, but she swore she saw a grin pulling at the trader's lips as Sturges asked Buddy to spout another joke.

"Man that thing's a relic," Carla croaked, her voice raspy from smoke as always. "Here, kid, you got a couple letters." She tossed two envelopes her way and she thanked the trader before heading up to her room. Mac was lying on the bed writing, and she tossed him his letter before hopping up on the counter to rip open her own. They hadn't heard from him again since the letters they'd received from Danse on Thaw Day, so she was eager to find out what the kid had been up to. They sat in silence as they eagerly read the correspondence, but it wasn't long before the silence felt heavy and troubled.

It was Duncan's handwriting, but it was like a different child entirely had written it. He didn't talk about the color of _anything_ , or what stories he wanted to hear next, and he didn't ask a single question. Sometimes she got entire letters that were just a series of questions, literally. When she got to the end of the letter, and he hadn't said a word about Buckshot and Bumper, she knew something wasn't right.

She looked up at Mac, who finished reading his just moments later. He looked up to meet her gaze, his brow knit with concern, then he said quietly, "Something's wrong."


	61. Return Trip

After agreeing that something wasn't right about the letters from Duncan, it took them all of about ten seconds to decide they needed to travel back south to check on him. Things had been calm over the last month after all, and when they explained the situation to Preston, he assured them that he and Ronnie could keep things under control while they were gone.

To save time, they went straight to D.C. to take the shorter walk north. The Brotherhood convoy dropped them off at 'The Citadel' - aka _the freaking Pentagon_ \- and they slowly worked their way back north toward the farm. It was pretty rough, Mac had been right before to suggest they come from the other direction. What should have taken one long day instead took over two due to the resistance they encountered, but it was still faster than the four it would have taken if they'd stopped in Philadelphia, albeit significantly more dangerous.

When they arrived to find an empty farmhouse, MacCready started to panic pretty heavily. She tried to keep his anxiety contained until they'd searched all the outlying crop fields, storage sheds and barns, but after a thorough sweep, any bit of calm she'd held onto herself was dashed as well. There were no super mutants, no ghouls, no signs of struggle, no indication of where they'd went or how long they'd been gone. Not only were Owen and Duncan missing, there were no signs that Eclair and Joseph had been there, even since their last trip two months ago. The kitchen was untouched, the spices, pots and pans all in the same spots she'd left them after making the barbecue sauce.

"Why would they leave again and not write?" MacCready asked as they hunted around Duncan's room for any indication of what might have happened.

"I don't know," she said dejectedly. "Maybe they did, and we just didn't get the letters before we left?" She wanted to help him, but she was as confused as he was. The only thing she found that she thought was out of place were a few discarded syringes in the trash can out back. When she asked Mac about it, he just shook his head and told her that none of the guys were sick that he knew of.

The next morning they started a sweeping search of the surrounding area, drawing out in increasingly larger circles away from the farm, looking for any sign of where they may have gone. She had to drag Mac back each evening before sundown, he would of searched through the night if left to his own devices. After she insisted that getting himself killed would certainly do Duncan no good, he reluctantly agreed to return.

They had just begun their sweep on the third day when they encountered Owen and Duncan traveling toward the house, headed west on the road that ran in front of the farm. They were only about a quarter mile from the front porch, and the house was still visible on the ridge behind them as MacCready ran forward to hug his son. Though receptive, Duncan didn't show the same enthusiasm he had the last time they showed up. In fact, he didn't really react to their presence at all.

Owen seemed surprised to see them and he scratched his short hair nervously as Mac slung a series of questions at them about where they'd been. She kept her eyes locked on the man… because something was off. He seemed different than he had before. He was anxious, and not as carefree about their unexpected visit as he'd been last time.

"What's going on?" MacCready finally demanded from Owen, though he stayed kneeling down, looking Duncan in the eye. She thought they might go into their staring-match ritual, but Duncan just kept blinking and couldn't focus on Mac's face.

"We were just out getting supplies," Owen said, but he didn't even look like he believed his own story. He had no extraneous supplies to show for it, just a small pack he had strapped across his back, and Duncan carried nothing. MacCready stood up and looked the taller man in the eye unflinchingly for a few long, tense moments.

"There were never any super mutants, were there?" Mac asked flatly. It took her a minute to understand what he was getting at. He apparently no longer believed Owen's story from the last time they came that they'd fled south after being flushed out by super mutants. Owen said nothing in response, just staring back at MacCready with steely resolve.

"Where were you - and what's wrong with him?" Mac demanded with a kind of finality that said he wasn't going to ask again.

"It's some kind of testing," Duncan said suddenly.

"Duncan, quiet," Owen said quickly.

"Sorry Uncle," he said, then rubbed his eyes sleepily. Mac looked at Duncan with disbelief for a few long seconds, then put a hand on Owen's chest and pushed him a few feet away from her and Duncan. He spoke in a low tone, and she couldn't overhear exactly what he said, but it was something to the effect of, 'Either you tell me right now what the hell my son means by _some kind of testing_ , or I will in no uncertain terms make you suffer.' Plus or minus a few dozen expletives.

"It's… research," Owen explained reluctantly, "Into the disease he had."

"Research?" Mac asked incredulously, no longer bothering to keep his voice low. "What are you talking about? Are his symptoms coming back?"

"No," Owen said. "It's to try and determine how the cure worked."

"Why?" Mac asked. "If he's healed?"

"They wanted to recreate the serum."

" _They_?" Mac asked, then spouted even more questions, "Who? Where - why would you do that?"

"We needed the money," Owen said reluctantly, and MacCready immediately scoffed. When Owen said nothing, he realized he was being serious.

"I send you hundreds of caps every week," Mac said, then he turned and indicated her, "She's sent even more! You can't tell me caps are an issue.

"We needed more help on the farm - it's too much for just us," Owen explained.

"You guys have been handling it fine for years."

"Eclair and Joe have been gone for half a year," Owen admitted, shaking his head. Mac said nothing for a long time, just stared at the man with a disbelieving grimace creasing his brow. At least Owen seemed to offering them the honest facts - but that didn't make it any easier to comprehend his actions.

"What?" Mac said finally, his look despondent and pained.

"They went looking for work. There's no caps to be made out here, in the middle of nowhere, Robert. You know that, it's the same reason you left," Owen said defeatedly. "They said they'd be back, but… at this point I think it's safe to say they're gone for good."

"So instead of telling me what's going on, you give up my son as a test subject to make a few extra caps? How long has this been going on?" Mac asked.

"When you came last, that was just the second time. So, a couple months is all," Owen assured, as if that should somehow make him feel better. Mac looked distant for a few long moments, he seemed to be starting to realize the depths to which Owen had been lying to him. She was starting to grow a little apprehensive about how he was going to handle the situation.

"How much are they paying you?" Mac asked harshly, but when Owen said nothing, he instead demanded, " _Who_ is paying you?"

"It's a program the government started," Owen said quietly.

"The _government_?" Mac yelled.

"The government?" she asked. What the hell was he talking about?

"He means the _Enclave_ ," Mac snapped, not taking his glare off Owen. "I can't believe I trusted you with him. He's your _nephew_!"

"He can save others Robert, so more people don't have to die like Teresa did!"

"Jesus," Mac said, shaking his head in disbelief, "I knew you resented me for not finding the cure fast enough, but _this_ , Owen?"

"If they can determine how it healed him - they can reverse engineer the cure. He's helping save lives!" Owen explained desperately.

"You really think that's all they're doing to him?" MacCready said. "Were you with him, the whole time?"

Owen said nothing, his eyes darting around as if he was trying to find an explanation. He finally said, "No."

"Dammit, Owen," he responded under his breath, than began to pace nervously.

"I owe it to Teresa- "

"You really think this is what Teresa would have wanted? For you to let them experiment on him? She would have been horrified by this," Mac said with disgust.

"All they wanted was a series of samples every few weeks."

"What kind of samples?" Mac demanded, stopping his nervous pace to stare him down.

"Just routine things. A simple blood draw, some urine, bone marrow-"

"Bone marrow?" she asked with concern. She wasn't much of a nurse, but that certainly wouldn't be considered routine. Her father had donated bone marrow once, and it had been a painful, fatiguing process. If he had bone marrow taken once, nevertheless repeatedly over the course of months, he should be downright exhausted. She didn't want to force herself into the conversation, but she found that detail quite alarming. "Last time we were here - how did he still have so much energy?" she demanded.

"He's tired now because I haven't given it to him yet," Owen explained, "But they give him something to counteract the effects."

 _"They give him something?"_ Mac yelled incredulously.

"I don't know!" Owen said defensively, "There's a pill and an injection - every twelve hours. It helps with the pain and the lethargy."

"Oh Jesus," Mac said, burying his face in his hands and shaking his head. "So what - Med-X? Buffout?" Owen's guilty look said he had no idea, but that it could have easily been either or both.

Her stomach rolled over as she realized the implications. That would mean he'd been giving Duncan chems on a regular basis for over two months. It would explain a lot from their last visit… why he had such bountiful, endless energy despite being so thin and boney, why he ate with a teenager's voracity, why he had a bandage on his back and no memory of 'falling in the gourd field', why he'd been able to carry that heavy pail of water around the yard… why he'd been flushed, sweaty and feverish.

"You're shooting him up with chems, Owen? He's _six years old_ ," Mac growled dangerously.

"He just turned seven," Owen replied, showing his first ounce of vehemence. "Not that you'd know that, _father of the year_." That caused MacCready to punch him in the face, and then Owen tried to swing back, but Mac ducked and threw a shoulder into his chest to knock him to the ground. She just gaped at them as they wrestled around in the dirt, unsure of how she could break up a fight between two amped-up men who were bigger than she was.

Suddenly, Duncan latched himself onto her hip and buried his face in her stomach. She looked down at him, unsure of how to react at first, then snapped out of it and knelt down to console him. She held his tiny head to her neck and told him in a quiet, consoling voice she didn't even know she possessed, that it was all going to be ok, they just had some grown-up stuff to deal with.

She supposed as long as they weren't going to kill each other, she didn't have to get involved. Before she knew it, however, Mac had broke away from the larger man's grasp and had his rifle raised and pointed at Owen's face.


	62. Owen's Fate

"Mac, don't!" she called out. MacCready didn't pull the trigger but he didn't lower the gun and the steely resolve on his face didn't waver as he stared Owen down. It gave her enough time to escape from Duncan's terrified grasp and put herself in front of the barrel. She looked past the gun to stare him in the eye, though he didn't take his glare off of Owen.

"You make this decision, it's yours," she said as quietly and unflinchingly as she could manage. "But you can't take it back," she warned.

He clenched his jaw, and didn't look away from Owen when he responded. "I know that."

"Your son is watching," she said softly. After a few long moments, Mac finally blinked, then immediately threw the gun to the ground and charged past her toward Owen. He grabbed him by the shirt and threw him to the dirt with surprising ease, considering the man easily had fifty pounds on him. Mac kept ahold of Owen's collar and knelt down to look him fiercely in the eye.

"If you come within sniping distance of us, ever again - I will put you down," he said quietly. He threw him roughly back to the dirt then marched toward the door. "I'm getting Duncan's things, we're leaving in ten minutes," he announced as he walked away.

She watched him head toward the house for a few long moments, then lowered her eyes to look at Owen before she said quietly, "Duncan. Go help your father." The boy heeded her, giving Owen a confused, pained look as he shuffled past and followed MacCready. She waited for them to crest the ridge and finally disappear into the house before looking back down at Owen. He looked dejected, but not particularly guilty. If he held any remorse for what he'd done, he wasn't showing it. He mostly looked resigned. When he made a motion as if he intended to stand up, she had her pistol in her hand and pointed at his face by the time he got to his knees. He froze, looking up at her from under his brow.

"If the Enclave is even a tenth as much like the Institute as you led me to believe…" she said with a subtle kind of danger in her voice that she hadn't heard since she'd threatened the courser who took Mac hostage, "…then they don't think of him as a boy. He's a test subject. He's a means to an end."

"They only wanted to find out what the cure was comprised of," he said.

"You aren't that naive," she replied. "Let me guess, they contacted you?"

"Yes," he said, his brow creasing.

"They asked questions about his parents, where they grew up, what kind of radiation they'd been exposed to?" she asked, and he nodded. "And they only mentioned wanting to study the cure _after_ you told them about the disease he had?" She took his deadpan silence as agreement.

"I can't fault you for being stupid, I guess," she said severely, then took a few slow, methodical steps forward, keeping the barrel of the gun level with his forehead and her steady finger resting lightly on the trigger. "But I can fault you for abusing Mac's trust. And endangering an innocent boy's life in the process. And your own kin, nonetheless?"

"From what I've heard, you're one to talk," he said grimly. The balls on this guy…

"Here's the thing about Duncan," she said, causing Owen to flinch as she casually adjusted the pistol in her hand, "He's quite literally the only thing I've encountered in this shit-excuse for a reality that still holds any degree of true purity. And that's what I thought my son could be, what I wanted him to be. But I'm too late, and he's a monster, just like everyone else, just like me, just like you. I'll take care of it, I'll put him down myself, I'm willing to endure that - and I know what it makes me. But you… you won't even admit that what you did was wrong."

"I guess that's where we differ," he said, his tone giving up any pretense of innocence. "This is the only reality I know. I've accepted it, I've stopped trying to fight it. You still think you can save everyone. It's sad."

"Let's forget about MacCready's threat. It was honest, I'm sure," she said offhandedly. She tilted her head slightly along with her pistol. "I'm the one you should be afraid of, and you know enough about what I've done to know that's true."

"Then why didn't you just let Robert kill me?" he asked.

"Because he never would have forgiven himself for doing it in front of Duncan," she said. She took one more slow step forward so she could press the barrel of her gun directly to his forehead. "But I don't have that reservation."

"You'd be doing me a favor," he growled, teeth clenched. "Without Teresa, I don't even know who I am."

"See… you think you're calling my bluff," she said, "But you can't call someone's bluff when they couldn't care less about the outcome."

"I don't believe that," he said gruffly.

"And _I don't care_ ," she said, her voice as calm and unassuming as ever. She would have scared herself, she was sure, but she was entirely too serious about putting the fear of God into this guy to care about anything else. He said nothing in response, but closed his eyes peacefully for a few long seconds before returning to a hardened glare.

"I'll end it now if that's what you want, if you don't want my shadow following you everywhere you go," she offered. "But if not, for your own sake, I'd find a new place to live. Somewhere far away, because if our paths cross again, I won't hesitate, and - I don't know if you've caught on yet or not - but I don't really have anyone keeping me in check. I certainly have no one willing to stop me. They just let me do whatever I want, and I'm damn good at convincing them of why those things are not only necessary, but _right_. It would not be hard to explain your death."

Though he maintained an outwardly steely resolve, she could tell by the way his Adam's apple bobbed that he was holding back a nervous swallow, and the way his chest swelled showed that his pulse had quickened. He was considering his next move, but she could not tell if that move was going to be cowardly, brave, or just stupid.

"I'd go now," she suggested dryly. "I might get back to Boston, or Philadelphia, or even just half a mile down the road and change my mind. And if I come back and you're still here… Well, that'd violate our deal, wouldn't it?"

"The deal being you only don't kill me if you can't find me?" he confirmed seriously, but didn't make any indication of moving.

"The deal starts in twenty seconds," she said, pulling back the hammer on the gun. "Make your decision."


	63. Withdrawal

She was absolutely certain that of all the horrible things she'd seen over the last year, there was nothing worse than having to watch a seven-year-old endure chem withdrawal.

It had become clear within twelve hours of leaving the farm that Duncan had been even more dependent on the chems than they'd anticipated. They barely made it to Philadelphia and onto the Brotherhood transport before he started exhibiting serious withdrawal symptoms - sweating, throwing up, lashing out at everyone around him. It was worse than they'd thought it would be - and was severe enough that the frequency with which he must have received the drugs had to have been about more than just pain management. They had to assume that the chems had some, if not all, to do with the Enclave's true experiment.

Things hadn't improved any by the time they got back to Sanctuary. He was cranky, moody, angry, mean, hungry all the time, but wouldn't eat; thirsty all the time, but wouldn't drink; tired all the time, but wouldn't sleep. He would plead with them, beg them to make it better, scream and cry. He'd claw at the floor boards or pull at his own hair, and they'd have to hold him down to stop him from throwing fits so bad he would injure himself. They took shifts watching him day and night because he couldn't be left alone. He'd sleep in short bursts only, waking up in fitful nightmares and striking out with a strength no child his size should have. He was nowhere near mature or developed enough to deal with the emotions he was having.

The whole incident was absolutely destroying MacCready. He was so thrashed with stress about it, he couldn't eat or sleep himself, and she had to force him to drink water so he wouldn't simply dehydrate. She tried once to convince him to let her take Duncan away from Sanctuary to deal with it, so he wouldn't have to keep watching his son suffer. He'd refused, obviously, not that she'd really expected the offer to work.

On one particularly bad night, about a week after their return, Duncan had finally fallen into a sweaty sleep on their bed. They sat on the floor of their room and stared at each other in exhausted disbelief and Mac asked her quietly if they should try and find out what he had been on and just give him some, because he couldn't take it anymore. She had to admit, that one single memory of the happy, carefree boy she'd once met was almost enough of a draw to see the reason behind his request. This poor, sad, suffering boy wasn't natural. It was just not how things should be. But if one of them had to be strong in this situation, it should be her. So she told MacCready no - in no uncertain terms - and he nodded his agreement slowly as he realized what he'd just suggested. And it was probably the combination of the stress of finding out about Owen's lies, the drama of dealing with this fitful, angry child, and then almost breaking down and giving into his son's cravings, but that was the first time she saw MacCready cry.

After that, she couldn't take it anymore, so she asked Preston to keep an eye on Mac and Duncan and marched directly to Goodneighbor. It took her four days and dozens of threats to shake down basically every single person in the entire town. The whole time she was there, she could barely stop throwing up. She knew everything Duncan was enduring was making her sick, but her body was taking it so very literally. Eventually she got her hands on it - a single inhaler of Addictol. She then beelined to Diamond City to ask Doc Sun how much she should give to a seven-year-old - not quite four feet tall, maybe forty pounds. He asked her how bad it was, and when she told him what the symptoms had been like, he said dejectedly, "Just use the whole thing."

Fixing chems with more chems wasn't her preferred approach, but the poor kid was… she just couldn't stand to see him suffer any longer. She gave it straight to MacCready, it was his call, after all. He looked at it in his hand as if he'd never felt more powerless in his life. Then he looked up at her with these pained, bloodshot eyes that she didn't even recognize and it made her hate _so much_ what he was having to endure. He'd trusted Owen - the only person save Duncan he could call family, and he had failed him so utterly. And now Duncan had to suffer the repercussions of that misplaced confidence.

She stood in the doorway while Mac sat down on the edge of their bed where Duncan had fallen into another fitful, sweaty sleep. He held the Addictol in his hand and stared at it for a long time. It looked too much like other chems for her liking. Eventually, Mac leaned down to gently wake Duncan up. Luckily, he seemed pretty lucid and calm and he just looked up at Mac expectantly with those big, blue, heartbreaking eyes.

"Buddy, I need you to take this for me, ok?" Mac said quietly. Duncan nodded, then slowly sat up. He looked over at her and reached out his hand toward her. She swallowed hard. She approached the bed, kneeling down at the side of it and taking his tiny, sweaty, freezing hand in both of hers.

"It won't hurt," she assured him quietly.

"Just a big breath in on three," Mac said. He counted down and pressed on the inhaler and Duncan breathed in deeply as the chem released. He took a few slow breaths afterwards, then looked back at Mac expectantly.

"Now go back to sleep, bud," he said. Duncan laid back down, but didn't let go of her hand. She pulled the covers up around him and they sat and watched as he quickly fell back to sleep. That was the second time she saw MacCready cry.


	64. Addictol

It took another week to see the full affects of the Addictol, but every day was exponentially better than the previous one. Though the drug seemed to quickly alleviate the chemical dependency Duncan had developed, it didn't seem to help with the mental issues. He'd repeatedly ask if they would be getting more of the 'minty green pills', and that, even though he didn't like shots much, the one Uncle Owen gave him did make the ouchies go away.

The questions made her sick to her stomach, but each time she managed to respond in that same consoling voice that still sounded foreign to her, saying something like 'You don't need those anymore, kid' or 'You'll be stronger after this' when all she could keep thinking was 'This can't possibly go on much longer' or 'I hope you survive this'. She was finding out in droves what parenting a child was really like - which was learning to lie to yourself as much as to them.

She was so very tired from the whole incident, she'd find herself sleeping in the most awkward places, at any time of the day. Nine in the morning, leaning against the storage shed while waiting for Preston to finish inventory. One in the afternoon, in the middle of adjusting the war room map to account for squad reassignments. Once, she'd even fallen asleep face down on her workbench while in the middle of repairing a turret module.

After a few more days, Duncan finally seemed to be over the worst of it. He was keeping food down, drinking water, sleeping for hours at a time instead of minutes. He'd have periods of cognizance that reminded her of the boy she knew from the letters, just for a few hours before he'd spiral into another emotional downdraft. But it was something, at least.

MacCready didn't seem like he was going to recover from it quite so soon. Even once Duncan was sleeping through the night, she'd often find Mac awake, staring off the porch into the darkness with a kind of guilty despondency that broke her heart. She missed seeing his smile, she missed hearing his jokes, she missed excited Mac, eager for adventure Mac, eager to find something to kill Mac. Not that she expected any of that from him, when she couldn't even bring herself to feel anything that couldn't be categorized into the less complex emotions of either sadness or anger. She was willing to be patient, of course, as long as it took. She could only hope that in time, he'd be able to heal from it and she'd get her Mac back.

She woke one night from a series of strange, fitful dreams where she had been trying to stockpile mass quantities of food and water in Sanctuary, as if in preparation for the second apocalypse. MacCready was missing from bed, which was not an uncommon occurrence of late. They'd set Duncan up his own bed in the corner of their room, and she peaked behind the sheets they'd hung as walls to check on him. He was sleeping soundly, Dogmeat curled up on the end of the bed. Though the hound kept his distance at first, he had grown protective of the kid since his arrival. The better and more cognizant Duncan became, the more the two were becoming fast friends.

Autumn seemed to have truly fallen, so she dug around for a sweatshirt before heading out into the cold night to look for MacCready. Though she had no real reason to hunt him down, she was constantly worried he was going to go do something stupid, like charge back to D.C. so he could kill Owen.

She had to make the rounds twice before she spotted him, standing in the darkest corner of the boardwalk overlooking the river. He was leaning against the railing, smoking, the red orange glow from the end of the cigarette lighting up his face with each draw.

She'd never seen him smoke much before, but since they got back from D.C. he seemed to be singlehandedly keeping the shops out of stock on cigarettes. Though she planned to give him a lecture on it some day, she couldn't bring herself to reprimand him for something that currently seemed monumentally trivial. Though the cigarette was only half smoked, he turned and dropped it on the ground, stomping it out and blowing the remainder of the smoke out into the darkness away from her. He knew she didn't like the smell, and usually made a point to retreat to somewhere secluded before taking up the habit.

She approached slowly, eventually leaning against the fence next to him to look out across the river as well. She breathed into her hands to warm them a few times, then watched the webbed, smoky pattern her own breath made in the cold night air. They said nothing for a long time, simply staring out across the river. It was a cloudy, moonless night, so dark there could have been an entire pack of super mutants standing not forty yards away on the other side of the river, and they never would have been able to tell.

"I should have listened to you," he said. She looked at him questioningly - she couldn't actually remember a time when Mac had _not_ listened to her. "I should have stayed there when you suggested it. None of this would have happened."

"Mac…" she said consolingly, "This was not your fault."

"I should have known," he said, then he turned to look at her with a dejected, bloodshot scowl, like he hadn't slept in weeks - because he hadn't slept in weeks. "I'm his father, how could I not tell something was off?"

"How could you have - he was sick for so long - you didn't even know what to expect when he was healthy."

"I was stupid for ever thinking it would be that simple. I find the cure and he's all better? Just like that?"

"That is what happened - you _did_ save him."

He shook his head, "I thought he was safer there than here with me? That was bullshit - we made this place into a home and I was still too scared to bring him here because I was too afraid I would royally screw him up. But look, I got the job done anyway."

"That place was a home too, Mac - I could see that. Before all this started - he was safe and happy. You had no reason to think otherwise."

"All the signs were there. There was no evidence super mutants had been at the farm, and his energy? His hunger, the fever? I was blind to it," he shook his head. "I failed him."

"No you didn't," she said seriously, "This is Owen's fault - not yours."

"I was the one that put my trust in Owen."

"You had no reason _not_ to trust him. He's the only family you had."

"He's not my family," MacCready said bleakly, leaning back down on the fence and nervously taking out another cigarette.

"No," she agreed with a sigh, "Not anymore." He lit the cigarette with shaky hands and took a few short, anxious draws before stomping it out again, unfinished, onto the ground.

He stared into the darkness for a few long moments, and without turning to face her, said flatly, "You killed him, didn't you." She didn't say anything at first. She couldn't tell if he was mad because he thought she had made the decision without his consent, or if it was because he thought she'd taken away his opportunity for revenge.

"No," she said finally. "Do you wish I had?"

"Maybe," he said dejectedly. And he honestly seemed just a little disappointed.

"He'll stay away, if he knows what's good for him," she said. "Far, far away." They said nothing more, but stood in silence and stared out into the night again.

She hadn't planned to lie to Mac about Owen, and she didn't really know why she did. She didn't feel guilty about what she'd done, not then, and certainly not now, not after everything Duncan went through in the last few weeks. But part of her wished she hadn't been the one that killed Duncan's uncle, someone he had looked up to and learned from, someone who had provided for him for a long time before he started making all the wrong decisions. And part of her didn't want to be the one that killed the last of MacCready's family, even if he wasn't a blood relation. But all of her wanted to kill the man that had caused the torment Duncan and MacCready had endured over the last three weeks. And that was the part of her that always won out, in the end. Owen had conceded to it, at least. It was an execution more so than a murder. Or at least that's what she planned to keep telling herself, so she could sleep at night.


	65. Blueprints

A few days later, she woke to the sounds of Kincade screaming at the brahmin, apparently trying to get them to move up the hill. She sighed and rolled over, checking the clock on her Pip-Boy. It was just after six in the morning. She laid in bed for a while and considered if she held enough sway to implement some kind of reverse-curfew, then eventually gave up on getting back to sleep and went outside to yell at the sergeant.

She was surprised when she stepped out onto the roof to see Duncan sitting on the floor a few feet away. He sat crosslegged with pieces of paper spread out all around him, and he was holding his tongue between his lips contemplatively as he looked around at them.

"Hey bud, you're up early," she said, unable to keep the shock out of her voice. She hadn't seen the kid wake up before nine or ten ever - not since he'd started sleeping through the night at least. Instead of the pallid, washed-out look she was used to, his cheeks were actually flushed, and when he turned to look up at her, he gave her a completely unreserved grin. She crouched down next to him and had a look at the papers he had spread out - they were letters. From her to him, or from him to her - and it must have been almost all of them.

"I'm putting Buckshot and Bumper in order," he said proudly, "So we can read the complete story!"

She would have responded but a lump had formed that was causing the words to seize in her throat. It was more than overdue relief. It was like the tortured, dreary, chem-inflicted Duncan had only existed in some kind of fogged-over nightmare, and now she'd finally woken up to find him unchanged, unaffected.

"That's great," she finally managed. He turned back to his work, flipping pages around as he determined the proper order. "Hungry?" she asked.

"Yes! So hungry," he agreed.

"I'll get us some breakfast," she said, then stood up and headed toward the stairs. She teared up a little bit on the way to the storage shed. She couldn't wait for Mac to wake up and see the kind of mood Duncan was in. Though his recovery had been slow and steady since they used the Addictol - the attitude she'd just seen had been inconceivable since they'd brought him back from D.C.. If anything, he had become tired and complacent instead of unruly and frenzied - certainly not upbeat and proactive like he was presently.

She stood at the pantry in the storage shed for a long time considering what to grab. Normally she'd take a few hunks of dried meat and call it a day… but for some reason that can of Cram was calling to her. Like it might somehow spice up the meat if it was spread on it, like jam. Or maybe some squirrel bits, fried in it like batter? She was about to reach for the can when Sturges came up to the door, out of breath.

"Finally!" he said, his look a bit crazed.

"What's up, Sturg?" she asked, turning around to assess the mechanic's out of character behavior.

"I figured the damn thing out! I unlocked the data. There's tons… tons and tons of crap - but there's a map."

"A map?" she asked. "Like a blueprint?"

"Exactly like a blueprint," he affirmed. "Not just of the Institute - but of CIT itself - from back in the day."

She abandoned her scavenging and headed toward the war room, Sturges in tow. She called out to Preston along the way - he was down the hill trying to calm down an extremely frustrated Kincade, who still hadn't made it more than a few feet up the hill with the brahmin. Preston gave the sergeant an encouraging pat on the back, then jogged up the hill to meet up with her and Sturges. They ducked into the war room and hovered over the terminal. Sturges arrowed through the files that outlined various stages of the CIT substructure, including everything the Institute had added over the years.

"Here," he said, then stopped his arrowing as he landed on one of the newer blueprints.

"That's one of the relay rooms," she said, recognizing the circular relay structure and bracket-shaped console that sat just outside it.

"And that…" Sturges said, pointing out a specific area that seemed to run underneath the entire room. "That is an old water tunnel. They still use it to cool their systems," he explained, "And it leads all the way back out to the river."

"You're kidding?" she asked.

"No joke, boss. I can trace it back through the old CIT ruins and out to a tunnel that feeds into the Charles."

"So we can just… swim on in there? That easy?" Preston asked.

"Not exactly," he warned, arrowing through the map images to land on a new one. "There's a sealed hatch - here. But I can dig the access code out from the rest of this data, I'm sure of it. It'll be full of highly irradiated water, but if you bring the right protection you'll be fine. General, if you can use the tunnels to gain access to the relay room - I can create you a holotape that will activate our teleporter here in Sanctuary. You can bring Preston and I in that way - and then once I'm on the inside I can use the terminal to keep bringing the rest of the troops in."

"What's the plan once we're inside?" Preston asked, and only after a few seconds did she realize he was asking her. Of course he was… she was the boss, right? Somehow. How had she not thought this far ahead before?

"Eliminating Father and the division heads, that's one thing," she said. "But there are others that would happily take over in their stead. There's only one way to ensure the Institute is gone for good."

"Burn the whole thing to the ground?" Preston asked. She nodded.

"I think I can help you with that," Sturges said. He arrowed through a few more blueprints till he landed on a map of one of the older sections. "This is their reactor core," he explained. "I can rig a charge for you… if you can get here, shut down the main power breaker, and then place the charge inside the core - we can remotely trigger it and blow the whole thing."

"We'll have to get the civilians out first," Preston said.

"Maybe we can bring some troops in to coordinate the evacuation while we work our way to the reactor?" she suggested.

"Good plan, General," Preston said.

"Sturges, you're a genius," she said gratefully.

"Don't say that yet, boss," he said, though he was grinning through the warning. "There's really no way to tell what kind of defenses they might have set up in those old tunnels, and I'm sure getting to the reactor is going to be no small feat. You'll have to be really careful in there."

"When am I not careful?" she asked, receiving flat looks from both him and Preston in return. "Ok, geez guys. Copy - careful. No worries."

"I'll need to reconfigure the relay a bit - or we'll blow the generators trying to teleport so many people in a row," Sturges explained, "But I can be ready in… five days, easily."

"Alright," Preston said. "We'll plan to leave first thing in the morning in six days. Sound good, General?" She nodded her agreement and looked at her Pip-Boy. They'd be storming the Institute on Christmas Day. Sure… why not?

After they determined that, sadly, six in the morning was just a little too early for celebratory shots at The Foundation, she parted ways with them to grab some dried meat from the storage shed. She headed back up to her room, excited to wake up Mac and tell him the good news - both about the Institute and Duncan's good mood. As she got to the top of the stairs, however, she saw that Mac had already woken, and was kneeling and hugging a slightly confused Duncan in a tight embrace. The hug seemed endless, and Mac barely moved a muscle as she approached.

"Cryo, help!" Duncan said with a giggle, "Daddy won't let me go!"

Mac relented then, though he wasn't smiling as he let go of the boy to look him in the eye, he simply looked immensely relieved. They sat down on the roof together to eat their breakfast of dried meat and purified water, Mac ogling the boy as if he thought they were all in some kind of dream state, and he might wake any second. After they finished, Duncan _begged_ Mac to let him take Dogmeat for a walk to The Foundation and back. Mac agreed, but only after she persuaded him by pointing out the fact that they could literally see his entire journey from where they were currently sitting. The boy and dog skipped happily down the stairs, and she turned to Mac and explained everything she'd just learned from Sturges.

"That's great news," he said, seeming relieved, yet wary. "When do we leave?"

"We? I don't expect you to be there, Mac," she said. In the wake of the events with Duncan, she'd completely written off MacCready's involvement in the siege against the Institute.

"This is the _biggest_ grenade, and the _most_ sealed door - you think I'm going to let you go in there without me?" he asked.

"I assumed you would want to stay with Duncan."

"We have people here we can trust to take care of him while we're gone," he said.

"I believe that's true - but I didn't think you necessarily did," she said. To be honest, she didn't think after what happened with Owen that Mac would so easily trust someone with Duncan again. Preston, maybe, but clearly he'd be in the fray with them this time around.

"Nick? Ellie? Piper?" he suggested. "Hell I'd even trust Danse with him at this point."

"I trust them too," she agreed. "But I have to be honest - I didn't think you'd be ready to leave him."

"Taking down the Institute is crucial, Cryo. It's the only way we can make the Commonwealth safe for him," he said.

"I know. It's critical," she said, "But his father is the person he needs the most. Protecting me has to come second."

"I have to protect you _for_ Duncan," he said seriously. "I can't do this alone." That was sweet, and broke her heart, but he was wrong. He was his father, and what the kid needed now more than ever. She was just the random two-hundred-year-old woman that killed his uncle and then lied about it. She was the one that almost got his dad killed multiple times. She was the one that made Mac love her to the point that he refused to not risk his life for her. By all accounts, Duncan should despise her.

"What will Duncan have left if we _both_ die in there?" she asked.

"That can't happen," he said simply.

"The only way to ensure that, Mac, is for one of us to not go," she insisted.

"Alright, I'll send you a postcard from the inside."

"You're hilarious," she said dryly.

"We can't keep having this conversation," he said, serious again. "I'm not taking no for an answer and by now I would think you'd realize it's pointless to fight me on it."

It was pointless, this time even more so than any other time. She couldn't blame him, she could never blame him - she'd do the exact same thing in his situation.

"Alright, _Lieutenant_ ," she said carefully. And for once, he didn't refuse.


	66. Preparations

There were a lot of things to worry about over the next five days while they prepared for their assault on the Institute. In the forefront of her mind was Duncan. Though she'd reluctantly agreed to Mac's insistence on joining the assault, they still needed to bring in someone they trusted to keep an eye on the kid while they were gone. She'd asked both Nick and Piper to come up to Sanctuary, and though Nick wanted to join the siege as well, he did agree to stay behind and watch the boy when she expressed concern about the potential for 'reprogramming' should he step foot back into the Institute. The last thing she wanted was to be forced to kill Nick if Father was somehow able to regain control over him.

She and Preston went on a handful of loot runs to acquire the parts Sturges needed to make the necessary adjustments to the teleporter, and to create the remote detonator and explosive charge they'd need to blow the reactor. Though the troops were mostly ready, they spent some time reviewing the synths' strengths and weaknesses, and she made sure everyone was aware of the coursers' penchants for stealth. They even practiced sneaking up on one another using the few Stealth Boy units she'd looted over the last few months. That only served to make her realize how truly useless everyone was at detecting and combatting stealth, and it made her wish she could somehow employ her cryogenic foam tactic on an Institute-wide scale. They transferred some of the pulse grenades she'd acquired from the Castle and piled them in a laundry hamper by the teleporter. If you walked through - you took a handful, like some kind of depressing 'welcome to the Institute' gift bag.

Though the schematics they'd decrypted from the holotape gave them an overhead of the facility, it did not delineate any defenses that might be in place. She did what she could to try and remember anything she noticed during her time on the inside, but to be honest, she felt like Father was too narcissistic to believe anyone could find a way in. She wouldn't be surprised at all if there were little to no defensive measures in place, other than his ability to turn every synth and courser in the place against them once he caught on to the breach.

They decided on an initial force of only about twenty to start, and Sturges had instructions to bring in additional reinforcements as needed. She hoped that once inside, either she or Sturges would be able to hack a terminal to signal an automated evacuation. After all, wantan killing wasn't their aim - despite that being the approach Father had taken at the Castle. It was also decided that a squad of newer recruits would be brought in during the later stages of the assault, to help keep order and escort civilians to safety.

They'd all agreed that waltzing into life-threatening danger with all the highest ranking Minutemen officials might not be the best long-term plan, due to the risk of wiping out their entire leadership in one fell swoop. She'd suggested that at least Ronnie stay at the Castle, since clearly she, Preston and Mac weren't going to stay behind. That still left the potential for a gaping hole in leadership, should something go wrong on the inside, but no matter how many times she brought up the issue of chain of command, absolutely no one wanted to talk about it. As if just not having a plan in place would somehow mean they'd all make it out alive.

On a similar note of ignoring things with the hope that they might just go away... there was the fact that she couldn't stop throwing up. At first she wrote it off as nerves - caused by rolling right from the drama with Duncan into plans for storming the Institute. But deep down she knew it wasn't. She'd felt it before and she knew exactly what it was, she'd known for weeks. The lethargy, the vomiting, her sudden desire to eat Cram… Just thinking about it made her heart seize in her chest, which is why she kept shoving it to the back of her mind and pretending like nothing was out of the ordinary.

She couldn't bring herself to tell Mac, not yet, not until she was positive beyond any doubt. After everything that had happened in the last month, she was not sure it was news he was going to want to hear. She didn't even know how she felt about it herself, other than scared shitless. But keeping it to herself was starting to wear on her, and she wasn't sure how many more times Preston could catch her throwing up random places around Sanctuary before he'd catch on that it wasn't just nerves.

At first she was confused about how it happened. Well, not _how_ it happened, but when. It was either after the Thaw Day party when they hadn't seen each other for an entire month and the fact that they kept their clothes on for as long as they did was a downright miracle, or during the week of Mac's birthday when they'd basically been drunk and unruly for five days straight.

So then she started panicking about how much she'd drank, but realized with relief that other than Mac's birthday, she hadn't had more than a few beers. With traveling to D.C., Duncan in the state he was, and all the preparations for the assault, she hadn't had much time or inclination to drink. But with the amount of stress she'd endured over the last few weeks, alcohol consumption was the least of her concerns regarding her own health. It was one thing to beat her own body to breaking, to not sleep enough, to skip breakfast - to chug the bottle of irradiated water to force Preston to have to drink the purified one - when the only person relying on her well-being was herself.

She knew it'd been about two months when she realized she was starting to lose control of her emotions. It'd happen at the stupidest, most random times - like looking at Dogmeat and being completely overwhelmed with what a good, cute dog he was. Or finding out that Tenpines Bluff had run out of razorgrain _again_ and being so furious at the injustice that she'd pack a brahmin with a load of it and walk it there herself.

It'd mostly happen when she was looking at Mac, likely because of her guilt at not telling him, and because she loved the shit out of him and she was scared to death of what his reaction was going to be. She couldn't tell him before they went into the Institute though. Of the dozen or so scenarios she'd come up with on how he might react - at least half of them involved him not letting her go down there if he knew. Like he could stop her, short of throwing her in the brig. She didn't put that past him, however, and she was fairly certain Danse would be a compliant accomplice.

If Mac ever noticed her acting any more irrational than usual, he had never said anything, so she could only assume he was still clueless. Not that she'd ever expect a man to realize something like that without being told outright. That's why she'd been nervous of Piper's imminent arrival. She was certain that the second the reporter laid eyes on her, she'd know, and it'd be just like Piper to blurt it out in front of everyone.

Mac had just left with Preston to make a final supply run to the diner when Nick, Piper and Nat arrived in town - two days before Christmas. Nat and Duncan became fast friends, and Duncan immediately insisted on teaching Nat hopscotch, which they drew onto the cracked pavement with actual chalk, Dogmeat bouncing around them as they jumped and laughed. A year ago as she and Preston sat in the middle of this very street and began to make plans for Sanctuary, she would have never thought in a million years it'd be safe or populated enough that they'd have kids and dogs playing in the streets.

She sat down at The Foundation with Piper and Nick to give them the run down on Duncan. He'd recovered almost completely, but she wanted to make sure they weren't surprised if he had any issues while they were gone, although in theory the whole thing would take no more than twelve or so hours. She was so concerned with Piper noticing something that she was caught completely off guard when Nick asked her suddenly, "How far along are you?"

She about spit out the mouthful of water she'd just taken.

"Come on, kid," he said, like what did she seriously expect. "I just offered you a beer, and you said no."

"I…" she said, then did her best to wipe the shocked look off her face. He was a detective, after all, should she really be so surprised? "I'll… take a beer…" She blinked at him slowly and took another casual drink of water, but Nick just gave her a flat look - clearly he wasn't falling for it. She looked over at Piper who was frozen in place, holding the sides of the seat of her chair in a death grip.

"Oh. My. God," Piper squealed, then lowered her voice, scandalized, "Is it MacCready's?"

"Jesus, Piper!" she said admonishingly, again almost spitting out a mouthful of water. She just set the damn bottle down, it clearly wasn't safe to keep trying to drink. She dropped her voice down to a barely discernible level, "Of course it is!"

"Well - I don't know!" Piper exclaimed, sitting back in the chair and crossing her arms with a pout.

"You should not be going," Nick said resolutely.

"Because, what, Nick?" she said, bring her voice down even lower, "I should just call maternity leave on this war for the next seven months? We have the opportunity to be on the offensive here, we have to take it before it's too late."

"Does he know?" Nick asked in an accusatory tone, like he already knew the answer to the question.

"No, and Jesus Christ, if either of you tell him, I will end you."

Piper grinned, "There's no way in hell he'd let you leave if he knew."

"Exactly, so zip it," she said. Jesus, this was not how she planned for this to go. At this rate, Mac was going to be the last person to find out.

"That's cold, Blue, even for you," Piper said. Even for her? What was that supposed to mean? "You can't walk into certain death with that kind of secret."

"Certain death?" she asked with a scowl. Piper shrugged.

"What the reporter means to say," Nick said, rolling his eyes at Piper's lack of tact, "Is that he deserves to know."

"I know," she said with a series of short, nervous nods. "Ok. Yeah, I know. I'll tell him before we go to the Institute. I promise."


	67. FYI

She kept her promise, more or less.

She and MacCready had walked downtown, dove into the river, swam through the gross tunnel, and unlocked the entry grate with the code Sturges provided. Then they waded through more tunnels, killing feral ghouls, turrets and synth patrollers. Then they wound through some hallways and old classrooms, and then swam through a few _more_ tunnels, then through the hatchway into the relay room. They ditched their hazmat suits and adjusted their armor and weaponry.

And… _then_ she told him.

"Mac, I have two things to tell you," she announced, stepping in front of him as he put his hat back on. Her heart began to race and her emotions were sweltering even worse than usual.

"Uh… now?" he asked, indicating the console across the room behind her and the fact that they were mere steps from being literally _inside_ the Institute.

"Yes, now," she said.

"Oh… okay," he said nervously, "What is it?"

"One - I killed Owen." She held her breath. He sighed.

"I know," he said resignedly.

" _You know_?" she asked incredulously. What the damn hell?

"I get it - why you didn't want to admit it. You thought I might be mad that you took the opportunity away from me... or that I might not be able to forgive you."

"Well!" she said, ready for an argument, then realizing he was right, "…well, yeah."

"I'm not pleased you didn't tell me, but I'm not mad. I was ready to do it myself, but you were right to stop me. Duncan didn't need that memory haunting him too," he explained. She sighed. That went much better than she'd anticipated. "Ok, what's two?" he asked with an expectant look, causing her heart to start racing again.

"Two…" she said thoughtfully. She thought about backtracking out of it… _oh did I say two? I meant one - silly me, can't count._ Because, seriously, what was she doing? She was going to tell him here, like this, right now?

"I'm pregnant," the words fell right out of her mouth and she just about tried to physically scoop them back up, she was so surprised by her own voice. His look remained unchanged as he stared back at her, and he didn't blink or seem to breathe for a long time.

Then finally, as if maybe he'd misheard her, he said, "I'm… sorry…?"

"I didn't want to tell you until I was sure," she explained. He just kept staring at her with that same blank look and it was starting to unnerve her.

"So right this very second in the Institute, in this relay room while we walk into the most dangerous thing we've ever done - this was the exact moment you became… _sure_?" he asked.

"Well… no, but - I didn't want to go into this having lied to you. You deserved to know."

"You're right, I did deserve to know," he said quietly, but he might as well have ripped her heart right out of her chest. She had to remind herself to breathe. He looked down to gape at her stomach like it wasn't even a part of her body. "When?" he asked, "How long?"

"I don't know for sure," she said, shaking her head, "Thaw Day maybe… or your birthday." His brow remained creased but he gave a small nod, accepting the likelihood of either scenario. But to be honest, they both knew it had been Thaw Day. It had been too good to not result in exactly what nature intended it for. She still couldn't tell how he felt about it, and it was causing her heart to race to a point she wasn't entirely sure was healthy.

"Why'd you wait so long to tell me?" he asked.

"I didn't want you trying to stop me from coming down here," she said.

"Well, you kind of took that choice out of my hands," he said, indicating their current location with a sweeping look.

"It wasn't your choice to make," she said begrudgingly.

"You're right - we should have made it together," he replied. That made her feel like she'd been punched in the gut, because he was right and she had been stupid but she was never the best at thinking things through before she did them, especially when there was a little being inside of her wreaking havoc on her hormones.

"What about all the radiation we just walked through - " he said, looking down at the tunnel and suddenly seeming a bit panicked.

"The suits protected us," she assured, but he didn't seem in anyway _assured_. "Did you hear my Pip-Boy go off once?"

"Did you _mute the notifications_?" he accused.

"No! Jesus, give me _some_ credit," she said.

"Well… dammit, Cryo," he said with a sigh, pulling off his hat and crumpling it in one fist. He ran his fingers through his hair nervously a few times before pulling the smashed hat back on. "It isn't like I'm going to drag you home kicking and screaming," he said finally.

"I'm sorry, Mac," she said regretfully, and to her surprise he stepped forward and scooped her up in his arms to hug her in a way that felt… relieved.

Then he said quietly into her ear, "Just… tell me a little sooner next time you're with child and we're about to infiltrate and blow up a secret underground bunker full of dangerous robots."

"No problem…" she agreed. They kissed, then he looked down at her stomach, like he could sense what was going on under there, like he could see the kid's life lay out before it, even though he didn't have any proof that it actually existed.

"Let's get this shit over with," he announced, then passed by her to start walking toward the console.

"Mac?" she called after him.

"Yeah?" he looked back. She opened her mouth to ask the question but realized how many different ones she had, and she didn't know how to phrase it in a way that would make any kind of succinct sense. He seemed to sense her uncertainty, then he stepped back toward her, wrapping his arms around her and looking her in the eye. Then he _smiled_ \- for literally the first time since they brought Duncan home over a month ago.

"Yeah," he said assuredly, and it answered every one of the questions that was firing through her mind. Was this ok? Did he want this? Were they ready to start a family? Would they be good parents? Would they be able to protect it? Did it make him happy?

"Yeah," he repeated, then kissed her deeply, and she found herself hoping to God that it wasn't for the last time.


	68. The Cavalry

The relay whirled and spun impressively, eventually hammering out two blasts of white hot light. She looked across the top of the terminal into the relay room. Preston and Sturges stood inside, whole and accounted for. Every time the relay actually re-materialized someone, she felt like it was a damn miracle. Despite all the terrifying things the Institute had accomplished, it couldn't be said that it was not also impressive.

Sturges took the whole thing in stride, like it was the thousandth time he'd teleported and it was such old hat he couldn't even be bothered to react in the slightest. He marched right through the relay door and she stepped aside to allow him access to the terminal. Preston was reacting differently however, and he still stood in the relay room facing the inside wall. He was grabbing at his own arms and face in shock, like he half expected his cells to dematerialize again if he pressed on them too hard.

MacCready went in to retrieve the minuteman, grabbing his shoulders and leading him out of the relay so Sturges could continue to bring in the rest of the soldiers. It took about ten minutes for their first wave of troops to get teleported through, Kincade and Patterson among them. Preston had recovered from the shock of it by then, and he stood near the doorway that led down into the older sections of the Institute - their 'back way' into the atrium proper. He turned to address the troops as they checked their weapons and stuffed their pockets with pulse grenades.

"A year ago, I thought I knew everything about what it meant to be a minuteman," Preston said. "But that word has come to mean so much more over the last year than I ever thought possible. It's no longer as simple as helping others get on their feet. We are providing an opportunity to truly _live._ We are protecting the defenseless, rooting out evil, keeping order, and creating places people are proud to call home - and are willing to defend with their own lives.

"We must continue to lead by example - and that is what has led us here, on this day, to defend everything we hold dear. The Institute has become a blight on the potential of the Commonwealth. No one can feel safe, no one can put down roots, no can be truly happy until this menace has been eliminated.

"We will likely encounter great resistance as we head deeper into the belly of the beast. But as we have so many times before, I know we will prevail in the face of insurmountable odds. The reward for our sacrifice will be a victory for the whole of the Commonwealth - one that every citizen will be able to hold accountable as the day they no longer had to live in fear - the day they became free citizens of the Commonwealth!"

She found herself grinning as the others cheered and whistled in reaction to Preston's speech, and she exchanged an impressed look with MacCready. Preston had always had a way with words, but to pull that speech seemingly out of nowhere was admirable.

"A few words from our General?" Preston asked. Everyone turned to look at her, and her stomach lurched unsettlingly. Ugh, now? Her body had a grand sense of timing. She held up a finger, as if to request that they give her just one minute. Then she leaned behind the console as casually as she could… and threw up.

"I'm good," she said moments later, popping back up. "Let's do this."

She marched past everyone directly to the stairs, choosing not to take in their reactions to her short and sweet motivational speech, one she was certain would go down in Minutemen history. To her surprise, they only chuckled a little bit and afforded her a few deferential pats on the back as she crossed by and started down the stairs. By now, it seemed, very little she did would surprise them.

They encountered ample resistance on their way toward the 'back entrance' through Bioscience, mostly in the form of turrets and synth patrollers. There was one sentry bot, but its existence was short-lived when half of their troops had the same idea at the same time and all but simultaneously pulled the pins on their pulse grenades and tossed them at its feet. The resulting concurrent explosions shocked them all, and despite the fact that she'd apparently intended to just stand in the doorway and watch it happen, Mac had luckily noticed and pulled her to the ground and behind cover in time. He'd also draped himself over her almost fully, and afterward, she shoved him off and began to rail on him about being over-protective - ignoring the roaring fire from the burning robot nearby.

They eventually found their way into the modern areas of the Institute and through the back halls of Bioscience - where they encountered very little resistance. She didn't realize until she and Mac were suddenly alone amongst the planters just outside the main laboratory that he'd picked a fake fight with her so that everyone else would be able to head in before her, barring her from taking the brunt of the resistance that awaited them inside. Of course he didn't actually want to argue about the nickname _Papa Mac_ right now, it was ridiculous. She hadn't called him that in weeks, anyways, as it had taken on an entirely new meaning of late.

"I thought we talked about you not getting killed - Duncan needs you, etc. etc.?" she glared.

"Hey, I stayed behind too," he argued.

"You mistake my meaning. _I'm_ going to kill you," she said, then stormed out. She hadn't stepped three feet into Bioscience when she was suddenly knocked to the ground. It took her a few seconds to catch her breath and turn over to begin fighting off her assailant. It pawed at her with huge, hairy, black hands. Holy shit - gorilla.

She gaped up at the beast in shock as it opened its enormous jaw of gorilla teeth and roared in her face. Drool dripped onto her forehead in the aftermath of the savage bellow, and she couldn't help but think if _she_ had made a synthetic gorilla, she'd of left the drool part out. She immediately filed the thought away under 'inappropriate timing' as the beast wrapped its enormous hands around her neck. She gasped for breath as she beat at the animal, which felt akin to punching a cement wall, and it gave way just about as much as a cement wall would have as well.

An indiscriminate boot suddenly connected with the side of its thick head, knocking it off balance and sending it rolling a few feet away. Mac helped her up, then stepped between her and the gorilla defensively as it regained its footing and began to charge back at them. They fired simultaneous shots at it - Mac's hit its neck and hers was a direct shot to the chest. It stumbled and looked… mostly irritated, then continued on its trajectory. She was so shocked that Gausszilla hadn't taken the beast down, she didn't immediately fire again. Mac took care of it however, with one, patient shot to the forehead.

"I had that…" she said quietly, and he gave her a flat look. They ducked simultaneously as a synth rounded the corner and began to open fire in their direction. The gorilla acted as gruesome cover while they crawled past it to duck behind a nearby desk. She couldn't help but feel bad for the creature, it was only doing what it'd been programmed to do. It didn't know about all the politics and drama that had caused all this to happen. It didn't even understand right from wrong - it had never even asked to be created in the first place. It didn't know what it was like to have a mother or a father-

She quickly caught on that she was having a hormonal spin out, and shocked herself out of it by standing up out of cover and shooting the synth in the head. Mac looked surprised by her tenacity, then she grabbed him by the scruff to force him to stand up and follow her toward the door that led out into the atrium. The others had finished off the rest of the resistance and fell in line behind them as they crossed the lab to the main door.

"Alright, the entrance to Advanced Systems is just one section to the right once we step outside," she reminded them. "If we can stay concentrated, we can force our way there without having to clear the entire atrium. It's likely going to be crawling with synths, so let's not get too spread out."

The 'don't spread out' rule went to shit the second they stepped foot out the door and dozens of synth patrollers and coursers opened fire. The unlucky synths standing just outside Bioscience were put down by minutemen almost immediately, but then they all fanned out into various stands of cover, anywhere they could get to quickly. She, Mac and Patterson took cover behind a planter halfway down the stairs that led to the center of the atrium. They took out half a dozen synths before she heard Sturges' voice crackle over the intercom system. "Hey boss… quick update. The door to Advanced Systems has been placed on lockdown," Sturges said. "Only the Director's personal terminal has access to unlock it."

"I know where that is," she told Mac, popping up to fire at an approaching courser, then ducking back into cover.

"We can hold the atrium - you get to that terminal," Mac insisted.

"The doors are all still on lockdown," she called over the thunderous sounds of Gausszilla firing. "I won't be able access it via the stairway. You'll have to cover me so I can use the central elevator."

"You got it, boss," Mac said, then signaled to Patterson to help cover her. She dashed down the stairs toward the glass elevator in the center of the atrium, only to find as she looked back toward Mac that he was taking 'cover me' quite literally. He was following her, shoulder-to-shoulder with Patterson like a human shield.

"Dammit, Mac!" she called, then she slid into the relative safety of the elevator. She pounded on the button to get the door to close as quickly as possible, laser fire deflecting off the apparently bulletproof glass. The elevator began to lift and she looked down as Mac gave her a cheeky, two-fingered salute and dashed back into the fray, Patterson in tow. That damn man was going to be the death of her, if she didn't kill him first.


	69. Father

She quickly found her way to Father's quarters - only getting turned around once in the maze of hallways that led her there. She entered the main living area and gave a quick look around, then saw it - Father's personal terminal on the desk across the room.

"I knew you'd come back," he croaked.

"Jesus- " she said, her heart just about stopping from the shock. Father was sitting in a hospital bed across the room, propped up into a sitting position and staring at her indifferently. He was hooked up to a handful of sensors, one of which beeped out an audible indication of his heart rate. He looked… horrible. He was white as a sheet, and his skin was so thin and translucent she could see dozens of purple and red veins forking out like lightning across his cheeks and forehead. He had dark black bags under his bloodshot eyes, which had almost lost their color entirely. So he really was dying after all… She'd half thought it was just another lie he'd concocted to further his schemes.

"Sorry," she said quietly. "I didn't see you."

"I'm surprised you got up here so quickly," he said, his voice dry and raspy. She slowly approached the bed, stopping about halfway across the room. She didn't want to say it out loud, because rubbing it in face now, when he was so close to death - one way or another - was pointless. But what she was really thinking was, _Maybe if you hadn't wasted all your synths killing innocent minutemen for no good reason - you'd of had more left to defend yourself_.

"I'm disappointed… that you weren't able to understand my vision for the Commonwealth," he said, coughing and grimacing at the pain the action caused.

"I'm disappointed that you're unable to see how warped and inhumane it is," she countered.

"You think I don't know what humanity is… but I know. I know how important it is. That's why I dedicated my life to trying to find a way to _preserve_ it. I've been down here my entire life trying to do exactly that."

"And that's why I think you don't know the first thing about it," she said. "You've kept yourself so sequestered - you haven't really lived."

"That's _your_ experience of humanity," he said, "This is mine. Who determines whose is right?" _The one with the explosive charge_ , she thought.

"This is going to be over soon," she said. "Will you give me the passcode to your terminal so I can issue an evacuation?"

He half laughed, half coughed into his hand, then wiped the blood he hacked up onto his blanket. "And you'll unlock the door to the reactor while you're at it?" he said dryly.

"I'll get to that reactor one way or another, you know I will," she said, the fervency in her voice rising. "And you also know how many people will die if you don't give me that code."

"And I suppose they're all innocents?"

"Most of them, yes."

"You really think it was that simple?" he asked, looking at her as if he couldn't believe how naive she was being. "I know you want me to be the consummate bad guy - but this was a group effort."

"This isn't about killing - anyone - whether they deserve it or not. You have to believe that - I would never want that."

"Truthfully, _mother_ , I don't know the first thing about you," he growled. "But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I was still holding out hope that a shared lineage might meant something deeper - even though we'd been separated. That was foolish." This example seemed extreme, but she couldn't disagree. How could you see eye-to-eye with someone so different than you, even if they shared your DNA? If you hadn't had a chance to raise them or grow up with them, impart your own morals or accept their morals as your own, then why should you be any more likely to agree with their decisions than any other random person?

"You don't have to let everyone else suffer because of what you did," she said finally. It was a harsh way to put it, but it was how she felt. She wasn't going to bother pulling her punches at this point. His brow creased even deeper, and she saw a hint in his eyes of something she hadn't before… culpability.

"Fine," he growled. "Nine, zero, zero, three. It'll override the lockdown and initiate standard evacuation protocols."

"Thank you," she said genuinely, then stepped to the console to type in the command. A series of loud beeps over the intercom system and an automated announcement signaled the start of the evacuation and she felt a wave of relief. She arrowed back through the menus and unlocked the door to Advanced Systems, then returned to Father's bedside, unsure of what to say.

"Just go," he said plainly, "You've made your decision."

"Let me… let me help you," she said seriously, indicating the nearby cabinet, full of medical supplies. "There's got to be something I can give you to ease the pain."

"You're about to blow up my entire existence. You think it matters if you put me out of my misery thirty minutes earlier?"

"That could be painful… the explosion," she said, then added quietly, "It could take time to die."

"I'm certain you think that's what I deserve," he said harshly.

"You think I wanted it this way?" she demanded, her eyes beginning to fill with wetness. "You don't deserve to suffer, no one does."

"Strange you choose now to start to care about my well being."

"I never wanted to hurt you. Why do you think I sat on my hands for the last four months? The only reason I'm even here is because because you attacked the Minutemen."

"Their leader declared me an enemy," he explained harshly.

"You think we're the only ones?" she asked incredulously. "You know how many enemies you've made up there? If it wasn't the Minutemen, it would have been the Railroad, or the Brotherhood - or the people themselves! You were driving them crazy, kidnapping their loved ones, replacing their family members with synth copies - it was only a matter of time before something like this happened."

"Maybe that's true, but _you_ could have made something of this place after I was gone. But instead you want to burn to the ground, just like everything else. So no. If you want to kill me - you kill me with violence and fire - it's what you're good at."

Her face flushed, partly because she knew he was right and it made her embarrassed, but partly because she knew he was right… and it made her angry. What right did he have to judge her? "You think I had a choice?" she growled. "You saw it up there, you know what it's like. You talk about staying down here to try and save mankind? Like hell. You were _hiding_. I can't blame you - it's a shit storm up there. Maybe if I had a choice I would have holed up somewhere too. But you can't save mankind by hiding downstairs and prodding at them with robots."

"There it is again - no faith in the vision - in the bigger picture."

"Maybe if I would have seen something you were doing - anything - that didn't just _terrify_ me," she said. "You didn't give me a single straight answer since the moment we met - a sure way to receive tempered trust is to give it in return, by the way. And I recognized that look in your eye when we met up on the surface after Bunker Hill - because I've asked myself that exact same question."

He sighed, nodding slightly as he recalled the thought, "Wouldn't it just be easier to start all over again?" At least he was starting to admit it.

"So forgive me if I don't trust in the 'bright future' you foresaw for the Commonwealth," she said dryly.

"So what? You want to put me out of my misery, so I don't suffer? I know what kind of death you think I deserve."

"If you won't do it for yourself - do it for me," she said. "I couldn't help you like I wanted to, and we both made mistakes. If all I can do in the end is give you a painless death, just… _let_ me," she pleaded. He looked at her seriously for a long time, then finally, to her total disbelief, he relented. He told her what vial to use, and with hesitant, unsteady hands she collected the supplies she needed.

Then she sat at the bedside and injected something into her son's veins… and she didn't even know what it was, but he had promised it would do the job. And she held his old, weathered, wrinkly hand in her dirty, calloused, scarred ones and looked at him with a kind of pain she wasn't sure how to even cope with. As the drug kicked in, he leaned back against the pillow, releasing his clenched jaw, and finally the scowl he'd planted on his face faded in favor of resignation.

His last words were the only ones he'd ever uttered to her that felt honest. "I'm sorry, mother."


	70. Reactor

All she could hear as she made her way back to the atrium was that one long, resonating tone that had told her his heart stopped. It was unending and drowned out every other sound. It had laid itself on a blanket of quiet - that muffled kind of silence, like in the middle of a heavy snowfall when everyone and everything was holed up inside staying warm, but you'd stepped out for just a second and the snow sucked up the sharpness of every noise you made. It was just that and the tone; it was punishing her with its persistence. Despite her tunnel vision she was still able to casually dispatch a handful of synths that had filtered in from the atrium, but she was on auto-pilot. She just couldn't think… anything.

By the time she made it back, the minutemen had cleared the atrium and lined up outside the door to Advanced Systems. She was certain her eyes were still red and her face still splotchy from crying, but if anyone noticed they said nothing. Mac and Preston gave her concerned looks but she ignored them as she passed. She counted only sixteen remaining, and the fact that they'd somehow lost four people already made her stomach churn. Because the worst was certainly yet to come. She marched directly up to the door and pounded on the button to let it slide open, then Mac and Preston fell in behind her as she strode inside.

She instructed sets of three soldiers to stay behind at checkpoints as they cleared their way through the old hallways of Advanced Systems and toward the reactor room. She knew more synth reinforcements would be making their way toward them, and the longer they could go without getting flanked, the better. By the time they found the reactor room, all that remained was herself, MacCready, Preston, Kincade, Patterson and two more minutemen.

They slowly cleared the inside of reactor room, save two coursers who had taken up posts on either side of the metal scaffolding that ran throughout the room. One had a rocket launcher and the other had a supply of some kind of vicious grenade that made a horrific, blinding green explosion on impact. More synths were beginning to come up the hallway from the direction they'd come, and she dreaded what that meant for the fates of the men she'd left in their wake.

"Mac, Kincade - stay here and hold the doorway!" she yelled over the din of gunfire. "I'll need some time to get the reactor shut down and the charge placed."

"What about those coursers?" Mac asked incredulously.

"Patterson!" she called to the sergeant. "You're with me and Garvey. We got it, Mac," she assured him, then turned to climb the stairs toward the reactor core. The first courser actually seemed a bit caught of guard as she charged up the stairs toward it, swiping its feet out from under it with Gausszilla. Patterson and Garvey had shot it a dozen times before realizing it was more than dead. She motioned for them to follow her as she took cover behind a stack of supply crates nearby.

"I think I see the breaker panel I need to access in order to shut the reactor down," she said, motioning to a small control panel to the right of the reactor core. She could see a strange blue, swirling power radiating out from a small window in the doorway that led inside the core. To the left of said doorway stood the missile-launching courser, who thankfully seemed to be out of his deadlier ammunition and was firing a laser rifle down toward Mac and Kincade.

"We've got you covered," Preston assured. She gave him a nod, then ducked out of cover and ran down the walkway toward the control panel. The courser noticed her right away, turning to redirect his fire, but someone from below gained a hit on his leg as he did and he fell to one knee as the limb gave out on him. She managed to stay just ahead of his aim and slide into cover near the control panel without getting hit.

She flipped open the covering on the panel - it appeared to be just what she was looking for. The universal symbols for 'on' and 'off' on either side of an enormous breaker. She grabbed the lever with both hands, and pulled it into the off position.

Absolutely nothing happened.

She waited… it was an enormous reactor after all, maybe it'd take some time to wind down. Seconds felt like hours… but still nothing. She switched the lever back to on, then flipped it off again. Nothing. Son of a bitch. Sturges had made a big deal out of insisting she power the reactor down before placing the charge, though she didn't know exactly why that was…

Then she looked up and saw Patterson falling to the ground - dead. Shocked, she looked around the corner toward the courser, gun raised in Patterson's direction. Preston was less than ten feet in front of the synth, and he shot the courser in the shoulder but the synth retaliated with a shot to Preston's stomach as he retreated down the scaffolding.

"Preston!" she yelled, but couldn't get a clear shot at the courser with Preston standing between them. Against all reason she charged past her friend and swept the courser across the face with the butt of Gausszilla. He fell to the grating and she stepped on his chest while she repositioned her rifle and shot it twice in the head. She turned back to crouch next to Preston who held his bleeding side in pain.

"General! You gotta get that charge inside the reactor!" he groaned, motioning toward the core, his own blood dripping off his hand.

"I can't shut it down!" she called over the roar of the machine. "What will happen if I go in there while it's live?"

"I don't know," he said in disbelief. She nodded, then stood up to head back to the reactor door.

"Wait!" he called - but she ignored him and kept walking. No time to question it now. She pressed the button to open the door and her stomach instantly threatened to expel itself. She tried to assure herself it was just a little bit of radiation… nothing a little RadAway wouldn't take care of later, and she'd already taken some Rad-X. But as her stomach rolled she was reminded of another, rather serious, reason she might want to reconsider leaping into a highly irradiated reactor core.

What other choice did she have? Patterson was dead, Preston was down for the count and she couldn't even see what MacCready and Kincade were up to downstairs - but she could assume from the unending din of gunfire that they were keeping quite busy. It was half Mac… that would afford it some radiation resistance, at least. And this kid was going to have to be tough, might as well start learning that now. You know what they say - what doesn't kill you…

She stepped inside and it felt like walking into a wall of silent wind. A strange force flowed through her as she touched the explosive charge to the core with one hand, which was instantly stuck to the metal like it'd been glued. She had no control over her other hand as it was pulled, almost magnetically, to press against the outside wall of the core. She couldn't move either of her arms, and she seemed to have more or less lost control over her motor functions entirely as the core completed the circuit through her. Time seemed to slow and she had enough time to think all of the following thoughts…

Is this what being on Jet feels like?  
Holy shit, Mac was going to be so mad at her.  
What the hell was wrong with her? This had to be the stupidest thing she'd ever done.  
But really, what choice did she have? She hadn't come this far to just stand outside the door and say, 'Well damn guys, close but no cigar. We tried our best.'  
Maybe it'll give the kid super powers.

Strangely, it didn't hurt. She could feel the intensity of the power flowing through her and despite how terrified she was, it still managed to feel exhilarating. She was just a conduit, another path for the power to flow through, to get from A to B. Touching the metal charge to the core had forced it to complete the connection through her - human bodies were excellent conductors after all. It occurred to her then that maybe whatever the Institute had done to augment the reactor's power had been the reason she wasn't able to shut it down. Maybe they'd made it perpetual, unending so it could build on itself and create the massive amount of power they needed… forever and ever - churning and feeding like some kind of immortal beast.

She was starting to wonder if she'd ever be able to pull herself out of its thrall, or if she had simply become a part of it. This was where she lived now… The briefest fluctuation in flow interrupted her thoughts, causing her to fall out of the core's grasp and into a disoriented heap on the floor. The whole thing sputtered and dimmed - for half a second or less - but enough time that the connection that held her had dropped. As she was no longer touching the core itself, she had regained control over her muscles again. She wasted no time turning over and crawling out of the room, pounding on the door control to let it close behind her.

She'd been in the core no longer than twenty seconds - but the degree of nausea she felt made it seem like it'd been hours. She stayed on all fours for a few long seconds to try and calm her heaving stomach, only to find she was looking at Mac's boots. Even his feet looked angry.

"I couldn't shut it down," she explained to his boots, then looked back concernedly as the core sparked and seized and the lights in the room around them dimmed and flickered. The floor may have also shifted under them, but she couldn't tell the difference between that and the surging radiation sickness she was feeling.

Mac helped her up and though he looked no less irate, he said, "Let's get the the hell out of here."


	71. Destabilized

After confirming that Kincade, an injured Preston and the few other minutemen that had survived had been ported back to the control room, she and Mac were relayed back as well. She let Sturges send the others through the relay while she tended to Preston's injury - in the form of injecting him with all three of the stimpacks Mac had on him. His wound closed quickly and though he'd lost blood, he seemed to be feeling no worse for the wear. She and Mac were helping him stand when the lights dimmed and the floor underneath them vibrated ominously.

She exchanged a worried look with both Preston and Mac before turning to look at Sturges, who had paused his incessant typing on the console. Then it happened again - more violently this time - the lights flickering and brightening half a dozen times before returning to normal.

"Boss…" Sturges said concernedly.

"Yes, Sturges?" she said innocently. He looked at her accusatorially. "Ok…" she sighed, "The power switch didn't work."

"So… what?" he asked. "You put the charge on the outside of the core?"

"No…" she said.

" _What_?" he asked in clear shock.

"I didn't think _outside of the core_ was an option!"

"It's not," he agreed, "The outer shell would have protected it - It wouldn't have worked."

"Well, the breaker didn't power it down - I didn't have a choice," she explained.

"Ok," Sturges said, then immediately looked distant, as if quickly calculating the potential repercussions of her actions. The floor shook, the lights flickered more violently, and a few light bulbs exploded across the room. Sturges looked back down to the keyboard to send the last of the minutemen through the relay, then diverted all of his attention back to her.

"You stepped physically into the core, while it was on?" he confirmed.

"Yes…" she said. "I may have, sort of, become part of it for a short while..."

"You completed a connection within the core?" Sturges asked in disbelief.

"Dammit, Cryo," Mac growled and Preston buried his face in his hands.

"It didn't really give me a choice," she said defensively.

"How are you not dead?" Preston asked. She just shook her head and turned back to Sturges.

"That… it may have destabilized the reaction," Sturges explained, as much to himself as to them. "If we don't blow it soon - the whole thing could melt down."

"What does that mean?" she asked. "Melt down?" A few bulbs on the panel behind them exploded with another surge of power and the floor heaved below them violently.

He shook his head, like he didn't have the words to adequately describe it. "If there's a meltdown, and it triggers our charge as well - which it would - it'd be like… feeding it."

"That doesn't sound… good…" MacCready said warily.

"Resulting in what, exactly?" she asked.

"An explosion," Sturges replied pragmatically, then sighed. "I don't know, boss. Something like nuclear times nuclear? It'd level the whole city." She sighed… of damn course it would.

"Well let's get a move on then," Preston said.

"I'll send you guys and follow in a minute," Sturges said, ducking as a light on the console behind him exploded along with a surge of power. She was reluctantly drug by Preston and Mac into the relay as she looked back at the mechanic, she was not keen on leaving him behind like this. If the reactor surged and they lost power to the console, he wouldn't be able to get out. He typed into the terminal furiously, and she felt the relay around her beginning to charge up, electrifying her cells. The next ten seconds felt like they happened in slow motion.

 _10…_ "Wait, boss!" Sturges yelled suddenly, slamming on the keyboard in frustration, as if trying to stop the relay, but nothing changed. _9…_ "Dammit - there's a life sign reading still inside in Advanced Systems. They're locked inside - the door didn't unlock with the rest of them!" _8…_

Advanced Systems… it was Shaun. Synth Shaun, ten-year-old Shaun, stuck in that damn room they locked him in. _7…_

"Shaun…" she said in disbelief, and both MacCready and Preston turned to look at her, the floor lurching as the lights flickered again. _6…_

"The sensors won't let me lock on the coordinates inside the room!" Sturges continued, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck standing up on end as the relay continued to swirl. "I'd have to relay someone down there to let them out!" _5…_

Since the beginning of all this, she had been ready - _so ready_ \- to give her life to save Shaun. It was what defined her. But somewhere on the journey, everything changed. Now she couldn't stop herself from hesitating. She had to consider this new life inside her and how risking her own trying to save Shaun would be risking its life as well - and just exactly how many times this afternoon did she plan on killing her own child? _4…_ It'd be all three in one fell swoop if she failed… but she'd make it out with two, at least, if she succeeded. If there was a God, he was being a dick.

Apparently, that briefest fraction of a second of hesitation was all Mac needed to determine that she did in fact want to go back for him. _3…_ Preston was standing behind her, and he reached out and grabbed her by the elbows and she was too shocked at first to fight him. _2…_

"Mac!" she yelled, but the relay was finishing its charge and going off all around them and before she knew it Mac was leaping toward Sturges and the sky was opening up above her as she ripped herself free from Preston's grasp and dashed forward. _1…_

Because she thought she was still following Mac.

But he'd stepped out, and she hadn't.

"Mac!" she screamed again, into utter silence. She felt Preston pulling her back so she didn't stumble off the edge of the damn building. It had been a swirling chaos of molecules and exploding lights and surging power. Now it was the kind of absolute quiet caused by being five hundred feet in the air on top of a building, so high up you couldn't even hear the gun fire or discontent that ravaged the streets below. Just the wind and a half dozen minutemen's ragged breathing.

She stood, frozen, looking out over the hazy city as she tried to unthaw her mind. Her ears rung with the silence, like that brief respite you get when your eardrums can't recover after a grenade just went off a few feet from your face. Then a light wind swept by to cool down her flushed, heated incredulity and she was overcome with determining what the hell just happened.

"The detonator is here, General," Kincade announced, unaware of what had occurred. She must have given him a look that could kill, because he stepped back cautiously as she swept her gaze past him to turn around and face Preston.

"I'm sorry General," Preston said carefully, "They'll make it out- "

"Why did you stop me?" she growled, stepping toward him threateningly. "I should be the one in there saving Shaun - _not Mac_!"

"You know why!" he said under his breath, his look tormented as he stared her down seriously. Jesus, he knew. Of course he knew, he'd seen her more than Mac even had the last month. She sighed but it came out more of a growl because she couldn't stop clenching her teeth and her breath was coming out in short, ragged bursts because she couldn't do _goddamn anything_ from the top of this building.

"General, you heard Sturges," Preston cautioned, with a sense of urgency. "If we don't blow it before it destabilizes, the whole city will go down."

"Like _hell_ I'm pressing that button until I know he's safe," she said in one long, flat, grievous breath. Take down the whole Commonwealth? _So fucking be it_ \- she was never kidding all the times she said she'd burn the whole world to the ground for Robert MacCready.

"I don't expect you to, General," Preston said in a flat tone, and she just about flipped her shit when she realized what that look on his face meant. 'I don't expect _you_ to.' _Oh Preston_ , she thought, _don't make me pull a gun on you._


	72. Shaun

Not a half second before she was about to hold a pistol to her best friend's face, they appeared in a blinding flash of light. Sturges turned around confusedly and Mac was leaning heavily on one leg, gripping Shaun's hand. The boy looked terrified as Mac let go of his hand and fell to the ground as his leg gave out. The limb was gashed badly in multiple places and he was already bleeding all over the roof.

"Everyone's out!" Sturges announced. She reached past Kincade to push the stupid button, because it should be her, after all - then turned to fall to her knees at Mac's side as the explosion went off in the distance. The others turned to look, they had to, it was one of those things you just couldn't look away from. She could imagine what it looked like because she'd seen bombs go off before, ones far more formidable, and they had done nothing but scare the shit out of her and ruin her life and take her son away from her and cause all of this to happen. So she didn't need to see something like it again, particularly not when Mac was bleeding out on the ground in front of her.

"He's hurt!" Shaun yelled, crouching down on the other side of Mac, ignoring the explosion as well. She'd already ripped her chest armor off and was passing her sweatshirt to Shaun and instructing him to apply pressure to the smaller wounds on his knees. Smaller being relative - there were enormous, jagged gashes all up and down his entire right leg.

"He… looks just like you," Mac croaked with a smile that was mostly a grimace, then he groaned in pain as his eyes rolled back and he looked up at the sky, trying to tolerate it. He was still awake, somehow, but his face was ghostly white. There was a particularly large piece of jagged glass sticking out of the top of his thigh that made her wonder what the hell had happened in there.

"What the hell, Mac," she said under her breath as she accepted a Minuteman's jacket from someone nearby.

"He kicked the glass in!" Shaun explained, as if it was the most heroic thing he'd ever seen. It probably was. And stupid. So stupid, Mac. What was he thinking? She could imagine the conversation…

'Well, I _had_ to kick it in, Cryo.'  
'Dammit, why?'  
'Because how else am I supposed to get a damn sealed room open?'  
'Hack the terminal to unlock the door?'  
'You know how well computers and I get along.'  
'Oh well maybe that would have been a good reason to bring _ME_ along!'

She was compelled out of her bitter daydream when she realized Mac's blood had pooled through her fingers as she pressed down on the wounds. It was warm and it was his life force and it was literally in her hands, but again, she wasn't a nurse and she had no idea what she was doing. Then she was reminded of Easy City Downs, when she had the same feeling of his warm blood spilling out all over the place and she'd thought to herself, 'If you don't get your shit together, this guy's going to die.' If her instincts were good enough to save him then, they'd be good enough to save him now.

She kicked into auto-pilot, ripping the belt off Preston's waist and slinging it around the top of Mac's leg. She tightened it down as far she could, despite how much he thrashed and groaned with the pain of it. Then she stared down at the shard as it mocked her - taunted her with how close it likely was to the major artery in his leg. It was daring her to pull it out, to see what would happen, to see if he'd bleed out before the stimpacks could do their job.

"For the love of God, someone tell me they have a stimpack or twenty," she announced, but Preston had already knelt next to Shaun with an armful of them.

"Get ready," she said as she ripped a strip of leather off the edge of the bloody jacket and forced it between Mac's teeth. Preston showed Shaun how to inject the syringe, and Kincade knelt down on the other side of the boy and took one as well. The three sat with the stimpacks poised, waiting for her to do her part. She hated this… the part where she had to cause him even more pain than he was already in.

"Mac, look at me," she said, and he about dropped the leather out of his mouth. She stopped it from falling, then said, "Bite on it, Mac, focus." He heeded her and bit down, and after his gaze floated around circularly as if honing in on her, they finally locked eyes. "This is going to hurt like a bitch."

He nodded, and she took a breath, ripping the shard of glass out of his leg. He began to yell out in pain, but it was cut off when he passed out instead. She was glad… he didn't need to keep enduring it. Though the tourniquet had helped, she still had to staunch the bleeding with the already bloody jacket, pressing down as hard as she could as the minutemen and Shaun injected stimpack after stimpack until they'd run out. She continued to press down and waited with grinding nerves for the medicine to work its magic. After a few minutes, she lifted the jacket to see that the gash had in fact sealed itself back up. He'd lost a lot of blood though, so much blood, it seemed like it was everywhere. She checked his pulse, and though weak, it was steady.

They finished bandaging the rest of the leg, though most of the wounds had closed up from the stims. She noted that working on a calm, unconscious Mac was far easier on her nerves than the thrashing, awake one whose every ounce of pain she could feel as if it was her own. She would have punched him across the face to put him out of his misery if she thought she could actually hit him hard enough to knock him out.

"He's safe to move now, General," Preston assured her. She looked over to Shaun who still knelt on the ground across from her. She couldn't stop staring at the poor kid as he gaped back at her, cheeks smeared with wet tears, half scared, half relieved. Mac's blood covered his hands and arms and some had smudged onto his forehead and cheeks and she wanted to say, ' _Merry Christmas, son. Welcome to the goddamn Commonwealth_.'

But… was that kid really her son? He had her DNA wrapped onto an engineered body… and it was real flesh and bone - he could hurt, he could bleed. But could he grow, could he get older? She knew he could learn and remember, and he was clearly scared to death right now. Did that mean he could love?

"Mom," he said, his voice faltering with a kind of disbelief that was heartbreaking. He hadn't called her that before. He hadn't even seemed sure she was his mother when they last talked.

"Who told you I was your mom?" she heard herself saying.

"What do you mean?" he said, his voice wavering, "No one told me."

His memory had been wiped. He only had those original memories, the ones Father had given him so he could more convincingly deceive her and study her reactions. Shaun suddenly leaned over Mac's legs and threw both his arms around her neck. She felt his warm tears and MacCready's blood smear onto her face as he buried his head in her neck, and she didn't hesitate to pull him close, to try and comfort him, to ease his pain. That's what all this had been about, after all. For over a year she'd been waiting for the chance to reunite her family, despite the cost. She'd risked everything time and time again and though somewhere along the line it became about taking out the Institute for the betterment of the Commonwealth… this was really why she'd done it. To get her son back.


	73. Author's Note

I just wanted to give everyone a quick update! Sorry for the slow down in new chapters, life/work got very busy the last couple weeks. The story is not over by any means, I like writing it so much, it may never end! I have a handful of chapters left that I want to get written in the next couple weeks, but after that things will probably slow down or be on hold until some DLC is released and I get back to playing the game more. Thank you so much to everyone for reading and all the positive reviews!


	74. New Beginnings

"Zero kids to three in less than a year - that has to be some kind of record," Mac said with a grin. He was laying with his head on her stomach as they lounged on the couch outside their room in Sanctuary. Mid-January had finally brought with it the firm chill of winter, but this beast inside her was acting like some kind of infernal heater, and she felt on the verge of sweating despite wearing only a t-shirt. Mac was wrapped in his duster and a Boston Swatters scarf, shivering as if he'd never dealt with such cold temperatures in his life.

In the two weeks since the destruction of the Institute, things had felt calmer than ever. The unnerving sensation that the Institute might strike out at her at any moment had finally ceased, but had been quickly replaced by the unnerving sensation that she either already had, or soon would, royally screw up this child. Mac seemed to hold no similar qualms, however, and spent all his free time doting over her and the unborn child, which only made her feel more anxious. She should have felt relieved by it all. She finally had a clear future, unhindered by the Institute, one she should be ready to forge her own path into. But Mac's sentiment said it all - three children had been thrust into their lives, and the amount of responsibility she felt for their well-being was weighing on her.

All things considered, Shaun was adapting well to life in Sanctuary. At first, she wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that Father had wiped his memories. She just couldn't reason out what motivation he could have had for resetting the boy, for making him believe he was the same flesh and blood that had been stolen from her husband's arms back in the vault. She couldn't stop thinking about the look in his eye as she sat by his death bed - how his hate and disappointment had been overtaken by something else, however brief. She didn't know him well enough to understand what it had been exactly - some combination of acceptance, nostalgia for how things could have been, maybe fear? Whatever the reason, he'd decided to let her have what she'd been after all along, and she was grateful.

She'd decided to come clean with Shaun about who he really was - all of it. She'd considered keeping it from him, playing along with the lie that he'd been frozen, then kidnapped, then raised by a deranged mercenary for ten years until she busted out of the vault and stormed across the Commonwealth to save him. But they'd both been lied to enough for one lifetime, and she couldn't bring herself to falsify his entire existence, even if it would have made it easier for him to cope.

Shaun had been very sullen in the days after the memorial service held to honor those who died during the siege on the Institute. When she questioned him about the mood she was surprised by his reasoning. He felt _he_ was to blame for the minutemen's deaths. She tried to explain the bigger picture to him - that the organization was a blight on the Commonwealth, that they'd been lurking in the shadow for years, stirring up discontent and mistrust. But, synth or not, he was just a ten year old boy, and he couldn't quite grasp the politics of the situation. From his perspective, if he hadn't 'needed rescuing', no one would have come, and no one would have died. In reality, the whole incident was caused by her uncompromising approach to finding and saving him - and when she tried to explain how if it was anyone's fault, it was hers - he surprised her yet again. He defended her actions with such ferocity she was speechless. It was the kind of fire her husband always had about the war - the injustice of battle - unnecessary death caused by necessary warfare - that defending the homeland and family had to come before all else.

Shaun continued to struggle with the idea that he and Father were biologically the same. She explained to him in no uncertain terms that even though they shared the same DNA - he and Father were not the same person, and that the older man's deeds in no way reflected onto him, and no one would ever hold him accountable for what he'd done. It was like having an evil twin that just happened to be fifty years his senior. Duncan had overheard that, and the two found the idea of an evil twin so intriguing they'd hardly stopped playing "Good Shaun vs Evil Shaun" in the cul-de-sac since. She found it a little awkward, though Mac thought it was hilarious.

She wasn't sure how Shaun and Duncan were going to get along at first, but what started as tempered toleration was quickly transforming into friendship. Currently, however, they were on the hill, arguing over whose bed Dogmeat was going to sleep in tonight. She was just about to get up to deal with it when Preston crossed by and stopped to mediate the argument. He was quickly becoming a dutiful uncle. Thus far, he had proved far better at the whole child-rearing thing than she was. She found punishing either one of them to be an extremely difficult task. She'd look at Duncan's big blue eyes and would be unable to forget everything he'd gone through in the wake of the Enclave's experiments. Or she'd look at Shaun and remember how culpable he felt about the events at the Institute, how confused and scared he'd been due to Father's memory wipe, and how remarkably brave he had been helping her save Mac after they escaped the Institute. Preston was always able to inflict discipline with impunity, whereas she couldn't help but feel like the poor kids had enough for one lifetime.

In the days following the siege, things had been tense between her and Preston for the first time… well, ever. He knew her well enough to know that if Sturges, Mac and Shaun hadn't shown up when they did, their stand-off would have turned into something far more serious. After the memorial service, she'd pulled him aside to attempt to clear the air… having that kind of strain between her and her best friend was quickly wearing on her. She'd started by apologizing, then attempted to explain where she'd been coming from. He'd said he wished he could understand… that he wished he could ever feel that way about someone - like the whole world could be so easily forfeit for the life of one person. Though he accepted that was how she felt about it, he couldn't imagine it, he couldn't put himself in her shoes. And he knew that wasn't how Mac would have wanted it - he would have wanted her - and the baby - to go on. He might have been right, but what Preston failed to realize is that there was nothing to go on to if Mac wasn't there. Mac and the boys were her whole world, and if the Commonwealth tried to put itself between them again, she wouldn't hesitate.

"Were you really not going to push that button?" Mac asked suddenly, lifting his head from her stomach and leaning up on one arm to look at her. She sighed. They'd hashed this over half a dozen times in the last few weeks, but he never seemed fully satisfied by her answer. She knew it made her seem like a total lunatic… but she couldn't help how she felt about it. She was _really_ not going to push that button. She glanced around evasively, which was apparently enough to confirm his suspicions, as he sighed resignedly.

"Have I not made it clear at this point whose life is worth more?" he asked.

"That's just one of those things we're going to have to agree to disagree on."

"Don't think I'm going to give up that easily, Cryo."

"Speaking of… you broke the rule," she accused.

"What? When?

"Except locking the door was _dematerializing_ me _…_ and the grenade was _detonating a fusion reactor."_

"I told you I wouldn't hesitate to protect my family. Shaun's your son, Shaun's my family. It's basic math."

"You still could have let me help you," she said.

"The reason I went alone is the same reason you hesitated. The same reason we argued about both going in the first place. We have more to think about now than just each other. Plus - those rules applied to _you_ ," he explained, then indicated her stomach. "Not any unintended passengers."

"A passenger? It feels a lot more involved than that," she said, wiping sweat from her brow.

Mac looked down at her stomach. "Are you making your mom sweat already, kid?"

"How many times do I have to tell you, it can't hear you," she said grumpily.

"Whatever," he said, unperturbed, "He's listening."

"No, really. Not for another… like, two months. And _he_? Gender isn't evident yet." Not that they had an ultrasound or anyway to do any kind of prenatal testing whatsoever - yet another thing that made her gut-wrenchingly nervous.

"Evident, maybe. I know the science. I know my guys decided the gender. They picked boy, trust me."

"Well they're going to have picked _fatherless_ boy if you don't leave me alone."

"When does the moodiness die down again?" he asked patiently.

She sighed at herself. "Just a month or two," she assured, "Sorry."

"You know what this means, right?" he said suddenly, lifting his head again to look up at her and raising an eyebrow in a strange manner. She just looked at him expectantly, then he raised a finger to point at her stomach.

"…That there's going to be a baby in… six months?" she asked, looking around like it was some kind of trick question.

"No, no. See you're looking at it all wrong, Cryo," he said, lifting himself up on his elbows and scooting forward so he could put his face in front of hers.

"I'm pretty sure I'm not," she assured, "That's definitely how this goes down."

"This," he said, pointing again at her stomach, "This is six months of worry-free sex." She about burst out laughing, but just gave him an incredulous look instead.

"Way to look on the bright side, Mac," she said as he kissed her on the cheek.

"It's all bright side, Cryo," he said with a grin, then scooted back down to lay his ear on her stomach again. He really seemed genuinely excited about all this… which was yet another thing to add to her list of reasons to be scared shitless. It was still the first trimester after all, things could still go wrong. In retrospect, their siege on the Institute could have happened at a better time. Life wasn't always going to be about perfect timing though, she knew that well by now. And if the kid was anything like she and Mac, it was easily strong enough to survive whatever crap she'd inadvertently thrown at it in the last three months.

Mac started to quietly tell her stomach the story of how 'mom and dad met'… and she felt her heart lurch at the use of those titles. She was used to them separately - he was Duncan's dad and she was Shaun's mom - but not together. Not them as a mother and father, as parents.

His story quickly became exaggerated, spiraling into a fantastical tale of super-mutant slaying, the daring rescue of children and innocents, and even saving the Brotherhood from a pickle a time or two. She felt a surge of hormone-infused thanks at his positive outlook, as she was certain she was feeling enough anxiety for the both of them. She was also grateful for his good mood, smile, and that lighthearted sense of wonder she'd missed so much in the wake of Duncan's recovery. She was finally getting her old Mac back after all.


	75. Madness

She was fairly certain there was no better sound on earth than that of a gauss rifle reloading. It'd been four weeks since Gausszilla had a round in her chamber, and the poor girl missed the sweet burning smell of electromagnetic propulsion. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and swept the remainder of her ammo into her bag along with a laser pistol, bowie knife, and half a dozen plasma grenades.

Weapons, check.

"Is pregnancy-madness a thing?" Mac spoke in a frantic whisper, as if she couldn't easily overhear them through the makeshift plywood walls.

"You want my advice?" Preston asked, matching his hushed tone. " _Just roll with it._ "

She pulled on her boots, then strapped on a pair of leather greaves. She slid her armored coat over her head and tightened the straps.

Armor, check.

"Roll with it?" Mac whispered, incredulous. "We need to _do_ something, Garvey. We need to _stop her._ "

Preston scoffed. "When's that worked for you in the past?"

She zipped her bag shut and slung it over her shoulder. She wrapped a tattered but warm scarf around her neck, then pulled on a pair of fingerless, wool gloves. She tugged a thick Boston Swatters beanie down over her ears, then slid on her aviator sunglasses.

Winter attire, check.

"If you guys are done talking about me like I'm not here…"

She gripped the doorframe and swung around the corner to look out onto the rooftop patio. Mac's cheeks flushed red and Preston rubbed the back of his neck nervously. He let out a resigned sigh, his breath fogging in the freezing February air.

She grinned. "…Far Harbor awaits."


	76. Shut Up and Listen

The lazy winter sun had just peeked over the horizon as she marched out the fortified gates of Sanctuary and across the wooden bridge. Mac grumbled behind her, struggling as he dragged his heavy bag behind him - weighed down with a slew of additional 2mm rounds and frag mines she'd forced him to pack. She veered south off the road and into the frozen tundra.

"Keep up. Danse is meeting us in just a few minutes."

"Yeah, yeah." He hoisted the heavy bag fully onto his back and took a few quick steps to catch up. "Can you remind me again why this is a good idea?"

"I don't think anyone ever said it was a good idea. But I can't sit in Sanctuary another second. I'm going crazy cooped up."

"I know, but the boys—"

"Will be fine. Auntie Piper's their favorite, after all." She flashed him a grin.

"Yeah, because she lets them do whatever they want."

"Preston'll lay down the law, don't worry."

"You're four months pregnant - is now really the best time to be hunting for a cliff to leap off of?"

"We're just helping out Nick, don't be so dramatic."

"Helping out Nick implies he asked you to be there. You just badgered poor Ellie until she gave up where he'd gone."

"He might not want to admit that he needs our help, but he does."

"Remember how we used to think about what Nick would say before we did something stupid?"

She leveled a flat look at him. He'd meant it as a warning, but all it did was prove her point. "Right, then did we did it anyway."

He sighed. "You know, there's probably a reason he didn't ask for your help - like he knows it's dangerous and doesn't want you getting hurt?"

"He's just stubborn."

"Yeah, like someone else I know."

"You don't have to come, you know. You can stay with Shaun and Duncan and—"

"Hilarious, Cryo," he scoffed. "Truly hilarious."

"Look," she said, stopping in her tracks to turn and face him. She pointed to her stomach. "Tom modified this ridiculous armored coat so I could both wear it and walk. And this kid survived exposure to a reactor core, and when my heart stopped when I thought you were gonna die, and he's gonna have far worse to deal with once he's out in the shit with us. This is just more practice. It's like prenatal training."

Mac bit his lip and gave her a dreamy look. "You really think it's a _he_?"

She rolled her eyes. "We're gonna go help Nick investigate this whole missing girl thing, then come right back. It's going to be just fine."

She turned back south and continued walking. Mac quickly fell in behind her.

"What exactly about your time on this earth indicates that things ever turn out 'just fine'?" he asked.

"So cynical, Mac, Jesus."

"I'm just worried. We've never been this far north. Who knows what we'll encounter up there?"

"Slaying radioactive beasts here, or a couple hundred miles north - what's the difference?"

"You saw that rad chicken," he grumbled. "There can be a _major_ difference."

"Exactly. We survived _two_ treks to the Capital Wasteland, and that was much farther. Plus, Danse is going to drop us off right on the island." She swooped her hand toward him and made the buzzing Vertibird noise she knew would bring a grin to his face, despite how much he tried to fight it. "We won't even have to turn our safeties off until we're already there."

Mac's smile faded and he sighed. "I know you're feeling restless, it's not like I don't want you to be happy. I know the adage - I'm not a masochist."

She glared at him over her shoulder. "What are you talking about?"

"You know - happy wife, happy life?"

She stopped and gaped at him, glaring. "I'm sorry?"

"I just mean - I mean, I know we're not—"

"Yeah - we're _not_. Because last I checked, putting a human in someone didn't give you any claim over them."

The words had hardly left her mouth before she was wracked with guilt over them. Her stomach churned as Mac's face turned crimson. He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked down.

She knew it was just raging hormones whipping her into a frenzy, and she wished she could control it better. Mac hadn't done anything wrong, and didn't deserve that kind of treatment. He chewed his lip and stared at his boots.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, "You know I don't mean that. I'm just… I can't stay cooped up in Sanctuary for five more months. I have to do something, anything. Feel useful, like I'm accomplishing something. I can't just sit around."

"I know," he said. "That's what I love about you."

He pulled his hands out of his pockets and a small, silver band glinted in the morning sun as he rolled it between his thumb and forefinger.

Her cheeks went red-hot. "Mac, what the fu—?"

"Just shut up, Cryo, ok?" he said, leveling a hard, serious stare at her.

She shut up.

"Listen," he began. He took her hands in his and looked down at them as he spoke. "I wanted to do this in Sanctuary - there was a whole… well, whatever, it doesn't matter. I just… I gotta say some shi—… stuff… ok?"

"Ok."

"I know it's too soon, and too late. It's all messy and in the wrong order, it always has been with us. And I know we're both still broken, but… that's just circumstance." He raised his look and met her eye, his grey-blue eyes light, yet grave. "Loving you is both the easiest and the hardest thing I've ever done. I didn't know what it was like to _want_ to live until I met you. To have something to fight for, that I wanted to fight for, that needed me back. With Duncan, I'd… I'd passed him off."

"You didn't—"

"I did," he said firmly, nodding once. "I made him someone else's responsibility. I didn't have the guts to make him my own until I met you. I saw you risking everything to get your responsibility back, while I shoved mine aside and ignored it. And I didn't realize how incomplete I'd been until I had him again. You gave me my son back, and I can never thank you enough for that."

He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, lips brushing against her as he spoke in a low rumble. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"I know it's cheesy," he said, leaning back to look her in the eye again, "but you really do make me a better person. I learned who I want to be - and how to be it - and I'm still learning, but I hope I can live long enough to deserve you."

"You already do, Mac," she assured, but her voice came out weak and breathy. Her hormones had caused her to do a full one-eighty, and she was struggling to keep the wetness from her eyes.

"You and I… we're perfect." He laid a hand on the thick padding of the armored coat on her stomach. "And this… this is gonna be perfect, too. And even if you want to say no, that's fine, because I don't need anything to know how I feel about you, and I don't need to prove it to anyone but you. And regardless of your answer, I promise, every day, to strive to earn that. I'm all in, always have been, always will be. You're it for me."

He looked down at his hands again, turning the ring over in his fingers.

"So, I know we talked about this once before… In this new world, there's no piece of paper or clergyman or boat captain or whatever. It's just what you make it, and I know I'll never be worthy of it, but I promise I'll never stop striving to be."

He looked at her expectantly, and she raised her eyebrows. "Is there a question in there?"

He scoffed and his cheeks reddened even more as he refocused on his hands and the ring. "Dam—… yes. Sorry. Cryo, will you, uh… marry me?"

She waited for a few heavy moments until he raised his worried eyes to look at her, unblinking.

"Yeah," she said.

"Yeah?" His eyebrows raised.

"Yeah."

He pulled her into him and kissed her deeply. He was fighting back a beaming grin as he broke away. He took her hand and pulled off her glove before sliding on the ring.

"Tell me you got this off some corpse somewhere," she said.

Mac let out an effusive laugh. "Uh, it's new, actually. Well… as new as these things get these days. I took it out of a case at Fallon's."

"Aw, big spender."

He grinned. "You know me."

"Wait - Fallon's? When?"

"When we cleared out those super mutants and slept in that awesome pillow-room."

"Oh, right. We were going to live there forever."

"That didn't really work out, I guess."

"Too bad." She raised her eyebrows. "Wait that was like… eight months ago. That was some foresight."

"Only eight months?" He swept a strand of her hair out of her face and pressed his forehead to hers. "I coulda got it on day one."

She grinned. "Oh, very smooth."

"I know, right?" he said, then kissed her forehead. "You can look forward to a lifetime of MacCready smoothness."

"I can't wait." She kissed him again, then pulled away just far enough to say, "If you think this is gonna convince me to stay, you've lost your mind."

He flashed a sheepish grin. "Worth a shot."

She gave him a playful shove, then grabbed him by the collar and dragged him behind her as she continued her march south.


End file.
